Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg Cultivate Secrets in Seoul

Emblematic of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg's distinct aesthetic, which is equal parts macabre and kitsch, the stop-motion animation How to Slay a Demon (2019) unflinchingly probes the emotional and physical turmoil of assault.

The six-and-a-half-minute video is currently being screened in the auditorium at SONGEUN in Seoul as part of the artists' solo show, Beneath the Cultivated Grounds, Secrets Await (17 May–13 July 2024). Curated by Mario Mainetti from Fondazione Prada, this is Djurberg and Berg's first exhibition in Korea since Turn into Me at Prada Transformer in 2009, when a selection of their surreal videos were shown within site-specific, three-dimensional structures modelled after human body parts.

The pair has collaborated since 2004, with Djurberg producing the clay figures for their animations while Berg, a composer and musician, develops the accompanying scores and soundscapes. Together, they create unsettling videos and colourful sculptural installations accompanied by hypnotic audio. As Djurberg told Ocula in 2022, 'Hans and I have our own [individual forms of] creativity, and then it just comes together.'

Throughout their works, the garden recurs as a metaphor for the subconscious. In an informal tour with the artists and the curator of their latest Seoul exhibition, Berg tells me that the exhibition design, which leads visitors from the ground floor to upper levels then down to the basement, is like 'going into a well and into your subconscious, where the secrets lie'.

In addition to recent videos and drawings, the exhibition features a series of newly commissioned mixed-media sculptures titled 'The Enchanted Garden' (2024). Installed directly on the floor of the upper gallery, the series comprises an array of cobalt blue branches—made from resin, clay, and fabric—upon which vibrant flowers bloom and equally colourful birds perch.

At the centre of the room, providing a nexus for these dispersed artworks, is a floor-to-ceiling cylindrical pavilion housing a white birdcage. A captivating soundtrack of birdsong emanates from speakers inside the structure, adding to the garden's allure.

The darkened third-floor gallery plays host to a trilogy of stop-motion videos—Dark Side of the Moon (2017), A Pancake Moon (2022), and Howling at the Moon (2022)—that all tell dark tales of temptation and desire. The sinister soundtrack from each work bleeds out into the space, creating a heightened sense of unease. Mainetti describes the emotions that play out in Djurberg's animations as akin to 'flashes or dreams'—they evoke intense states that are fleeting yet continuous across the videos.

In the era of digital animation and AI-generated images, the analogue nature of Djurberg and Berg's works is nostalgia-inducing. Stop-motion animation, with its rudimentary clay figures and mass-entertainment associations, retains an enchanting naïveté. 'Because I work pretty fast and messy, my only perfection comes through imperfection,' says Djurberg. 'The few times I've done something and it's perfect, I don't like it.'

The exhibition's narrative thread of fables and fairy tales extends to the basement gallery, an unusual space with gently curving walls. Referred to by Djurberg as her 'favourite place in the building', it has been reimagined as a seedbed of secrets. Light pools in from above through a ceiling well, in which hangs a sculpted moon suspended from ropes (The Silent Observer, 2024).

This atmospheric underground is home to a population of golden beavers, caught in moments of observation or hovering over more cobalt-coloured branches (Possibilities Untouched by the Mind, 2024). As Berg explains, the beavers represent 'the ideas that you're not aware of yet, but that are developing in the back of your mind'.

Of the audio he has composed for this subterranean space, Berg adds, 'I wanted the music to resemble a small wave that comes and goes. It surprises you when you're down here.' Building up slowly, the soundscape echoes the furtive nature of secrets, festering out of sight. —[O]

Beneath the Cultivated Grounds, Secrets Await is on view at SONGEUN, Seoul, until 13 July 2024.