Swedish artist duo finds beauty in the grotesque

Swedish artist Nathalie Djuberg's stop-motion films explore dark themes using grotesque clay puppets inspired by fairy tales and mythology. The exhibition continues through July 13 in Seoul.

A still from ″A Pancake Moon″ (2022) [SONGEUN]

In Swedish visual artist Nathalie Djurberg’s clay animation short film “Dark Side of the Moon” (2017) — now on view at the SongEun Art Space in Gangnam District, southern Seoul — a young girl desperately tries entering a mysterious talking cabin in the dark woods, only to continuously fail.

A wolf succeeds instead, disappearing inside it, and minutes later reappears, puffing smoke out of a cigarette in its mouth.

The girl, who has long given up on her initial purpose, is now licking a lollipop ferociously with a tongue twice the size of her face. It’s as if she is physically unable to stop devouring the piece of candy.

In speech bubbles, a dancing moon cries out, “Scandalous!” An overweight pig next to it adds, “Immoral!” In the background plays sensual, hypnotic music produced by Hans Berg, a Swedish composer.

Installation view of “Beneath the Cultivated Grounds, Secrets Await″ [SHIN MIN-HEE]

Swedish artist duo Nathalie Djurberg, right, and Hans Berg [SONGEUN]

Djurberg and Berg work as a duo to create media works that deal with natural instincts that fall on the negative side, such as jealousy, lust and greed. But they do it using grotesque clay puppets in stop-motion.

Stop-motion is a cinematic technique in which every movement is photographed frame by frame and then later pieced together to create a full sequence. In popular culture, notable examples include the “Wallace and Gromit” film franchise, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) and “Chicken Run” (2000).

While stop-motion films frequently target children, the Swedish duo’s works are nothing close to “Aesop’s Fables” — so don’t expect moral lessons, they say. Their movies are more reminiscent of a fever dream, or, better put, a “gateway to human subconsciousness.”

Their stop-motion films explore the depth of the mind that “one would not even be aware of,” Berg said earlier this month during a news conference at SongEun for the duo's first Korean show in 15 years.

Djurberg was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale in 2009. The pair also collaborated with Miu Miu on its 2022 Fall/Winter jewelry line.

″The Enchanted Garden (Purple Bird)″ [SHIN MIN-HEE]

Curator Mario Mainetti [SONGEUN]

The works shown in the SongEun exhibition “Beneath the Cultivated Grounds, Secrets Await” were inspired by Djurberg’s lifelong fascination with fairy tales, folklore and mythology. Mario Mainetti, the show's curator, says that the duo’s style resonates with the works of Tim Burton, early Disney animations, the Brothers Grimm and even Hans Christian Andersen.

But Djurberg’s works are plainly grotesque, as her monstrous clay animals are depicted with highly exaggerated facial and bodily features, such as bulging eyes and bubble butts.

Djurberg feels that such images emphasize beauty by highlighting its loss. They simultaneously express her own views on the idea perfection — that imperfection and vulnerability can be beautiful as well.

“If you only show something beautifully, it can get lost and bland,” she said. “But if you have something grotesque and ugly, you understand the beautiful sentiments and see the beauty in it as well.”

A still from ″How to Slay a Demon″ (2019) [SONGEUN]

Though the word “grotesque” is synonymous with the characteristics of being ugly and bizarre, it suits Djurberg’s art perfectly in cultural terms, curator Mainetti said, due to the word’s origin. “Grotesque” derives from the Italian word grotte, meaning cave. During the Italian Renaissance, grotesque referred to excavated cave artwork that illustrated fantastical human and animal forms adorned with distorted fruits and flowers.

″The Enchanted Garden″ [SONGEUN]

Some parts of “Beneath the Cultivated Grounds, Secrets Await” were curated to elicit such underground chamber-like ambience. Spaces are dim with dark lighting and feature installations of electric blue branches or logs intertwined with surreal insects and flowers or shimmering crystals with mushrooms sprouting out.

Because such a blue color doesn’t exist in nature, the full exhibition bridges reality and fiction.

“These are magical sculptures,” Mainetti said. “Because they are magical, they can be blue.”

“Beneath the Cultivated Grounds, Secrets Await” continues until July 13. SongEun is open from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. from Mondays to Saturdays. The exhibition is free to all.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]