SONGEUN is delighted to announce **Beneath the Cultivated Grounds, Secrets Awai**t, a solo exhibition by Swedish artist duo Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg. This exhibition marks their return to Korea after 15 years, following their 2009 installation, Turn into Me at Prada Transformer. The exhibition is guest curated by Mario Mainetti from Fondazione Prada.
Nathalie Djurberg, who was awarded the Silver Lion for promising young artists at the 53rd Venice Biennale, captures human desires and their subconscious through radically surreal stop-motion animations. Hans Berg, a composer and musician, brings these narratives to life with his evocative soundscapes. Together, the duo creates immersive worlds that defy conventional boundaries, weaving storytelling through a rich tapestry of sound, sculpture, videos, and installations. Since 2004, their collaborative work has challenged artistic norms, engaging audiences through an intricate blend of mediums.
Djurberg and Berg's signature style, drawing inspiration from Tim Burton and the Brothers Quay, combines exaggerated facial features and whimsical elements to explore the balance between innocence and darkness. Their work evokes a sense of nostalgia, while also embracing the macabre. The deliberate overstatement of their characters' features harks back to early Disney animations, creating a bridge between playful imagery and deeper, surreal themes.
Stop-motion animation remains central to their practice, with physical objects manipulated frame by frame to create the illusion of movement. The inclusion of installations and sculptures in the exhibition further enhances the viewer's experience, offering a sensory journey through macabre and enchanting narratives. Their works also resonate with fables and fairy tales by Jean de la Fontaine, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, where animals embody human traits and guide us through allegorical stories. However, unlike traditional children's tales with clear moral lessons, Djurberg and Berg's narratives are more fluid. They often unfold in loops, lack clear conclusions, or consist of brief moments of action where characters engage in dances or confrontations. This constant motion, driven by Hans Berg's music and punctuated by sparse speech bubbles, becomes a distinctive feature of their storytelling.
In Djurberg and Berg's videos, Berg's music guides the narrative, setting the tone and orchestrating the action. This musical experience is carried into the exhibition spaces, where it accompanies the sculpture installations on both the first floor and the basement, creating an immersive sonic environment. In this exhibition, lighting takes on this role, directing visitors through the space and illuminating installations and sculptures. The artists embrace the interplay of light and shadow, creating a participatory experience. They challenge the traditional exhibition approach, which often views darkness as a problem to be solved, leading to overly bright, characterless spaces. Instead, they design environments where videos can coexist with other artworks without losing their impact, allowing visitors to navigate a world of light, shadow, and mystery.
The concept for this exhibition at SONGEUN is inspired by the architecture of the SONGEUN building itself, particularly the idea of "found spaces." In architecture, found spaces refer to areas within a building that can be creatively repurposed to maximize space and functionality. SONGEUN's B2 level is a perfect example, with its cave-like setting, shadowy recesses, and hidden chambers. This evokes the idea of exploring the unknown and discovering hidden stories, much like the journey through mystical caverns in fairy tales, where characters confront their fears and deepest desires.
The exhibition invites visitors to follow a pathway from the bright, mythic spaces of the 2nd and 3rd floors to the deep, dark, and mysterious B2 level– a passage that evokes the journey into the depths of the human subconscious. As visitors move through this progression, they uncover hidden layers and discover unexpected insights, revealing the secrets that lie beneath the surface.
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Press release courtesy SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation.
441, Dosan-Daero
Gangnam-gu
Seoul, 06016
South Korea
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