Past exhibition

Flowers in the Attic

21. June – 13. December 2020

The exhibition Flowers in the Attic by the Swedish artist duo Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg is shown in Nybruket Gallery.

The exhibition juxtaposes recent film works together with The Clearing installation and invites viewers into this artist duo’s surreal world of dreamscapes and fantasy-filled re-imaginings of reality.

Djurberg and Berg's collaborations collide to create works that explore the shadows of human existence. Using sculpture, stop-motion film, sound, and enigmatic installation, the artists create worlds constructed of emotional tension, conflict, power, desire and fantasy. Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg have collaborated for over 10 years and developed a distinct and powerful visual and aural lexicon they utilize to create works that examine and question the multi-faceted nature of the human condition.

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The work’s, though often macabre in essence, successfully combine dark humour with the absurd. Physically appealing with flamboyant colours, cartoon-like representations and mesmerizing music, the works are seductive and accessible yet at the same time prise open the darker side the human psyche, challenging perceptions and questioning human morality.

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Photo: Benjamin Ward

Flowers in the Attic juxtaposes the beautiful and seemingly innocent flowers of ‘The Clearing’ against more sombre content of the filmworks. Themes of dreams, desire, guilt, power, lust, secrecy and fantasy are prevalent, as are strong literary references.

Backround - Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg

Working intuitively, unaffected by traditional art production techniques, Nathalie Djurberg crafts intricate scenes and characters from clay, plasticine, wire, fabric and paint creating a flamboyant, fairytale-like aesthetic. The figures are built up of layers of contradiction and cliché and take you to a place you would rather forget.

Hans Berg, a musician and composer, adds yet further layers of emotional depth to the works through his weaving together of sound and space. His compositions add drama and tension carrying the viewer on a journey that spans your wildest dreams to your worst nightmares.

Past exhibitions

The work of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg has been exhibition worldwide. In 2009 presented Djurberg & Berg's installation The Experiment at the 53rd Venice Biennial Making Worlds curated by Daniel Birnbaum, where they were awarded the Silver Lion for best emerging artists. They also received Cairo Biennale Prize at the International Cairo Biennale in 2010 and the Premio Pino Pascali Award in 2012. Other important solo presentations include Kunsthalle Winterhur, Switzerland (2007); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2008); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2008); OMA Prada Transformer, Seoul (2009); Natural History Museum, Basel Museum, Rotterdam (2011); Camden Arts Center, London (2011); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and New Museum, New York (2012); Contemporary Culture Garage Center, Moscow, Russia (2013); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus, Denmark (2015); Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany (2015); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2016); Stavanger Art Museum (MUST), Norway (2017); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2018); Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland (2019), among others.

Djurberg and Berg's work has been included in group exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Ghent, Belgium (2010); Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland (2012); Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg, Austria (2013); Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2014); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2015); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York (2015); Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany (2017) to name a few.

The artist's works are represented in the collections of the Christen Sveaas, Fondazione Prada, Milan; Goetz Collection, Munich; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich; and Whitechapel, London, among others.

The exhibition is curated by Kate Smith