Exhibition Review: One Last Trip to The Underworld
Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg This is Heaven 2019 Stop motion animation 6 minutes, 36 seconds Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
Something about One Last Trip to The Underworld, at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery has allowed me to confront why I take so long to get dressed in the morning. On one level, I could tell you it’s because I need to reorganize my closet. On another, it could be something about the human psyche that sculptor-musician duo Djurberg and Berg bring forward with their interdisciplinary work.
Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg Damaged Goods 2019 Stop motion animation 6 minutes, 28 seconds Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
The exhibition included four claymation video shorts projected among clay sculptures, establishing an experiential element, and thereby ruling out disassociation. The films are: “Damaged Goods,” “One Last Trip to The Underworld,” “This is Heaven” and “How to Slay a Demon.” Each surrealist spectacular has its own story but a consistent response I had was, “Why do I know exactly what they mean by that?” Djurberg being the claymation artist and Berg, the composer, it’s evident that the stories are told from a female perspective as the messages about desire, identity, and sexuality would not have been as clear as they are, otherwise.
Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg How to Slay a Demon 2019 Stop motion animation 6 minutes, 20 seconds Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
In “Damaged Goods”, a figure identifiable as a woman due to her consistent torso and breasts, climbs out of a box and proceeds to assemble/disassemble herself with various limbs, hairstyles, mouths, and tails of human and animal origin. These events unfold while another scene periodically cuts in in flashes: a fully naked woman equipped with “normal” human limbs, breasts, braided hair, and kissable lips. This far sexier women interrupts the other, pouting at the camera on her hands and knees in a pristine, brightly-lit room, not unlike something we’ve seen in music videos or pornography. Meanwhile, the first is occupied untangling her elephant trunk from her tail or flashing crooked teeth.
Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg Damaged Goods 2019 Stop motion animation 6 minutes, 28 seconds Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
Phrases like “I Pick Up This And That. And Then I’m All Divided.” are scrawled across the wall of the grim black box in which the grotesque scenes take place. The two women could be one in the same. Or, perhaps, the sexier one is something the protagonist creature compares herself to. Either way, it translates clearly as a deep meditation on the fragmented female identity in a highly aestheticized world where “being yourself” is the toughest task one can be faced with. And, it remarkably resembles a dramaticized version of my own morning routine.
Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg Damaged Goods 2019 Stop motion animation 6 minutes, 28 seconds Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
All of Djurberg’s kooky characters reached me in their own beautifully grotesque way. One Last Trip to The Underworld confronts the parts of us that don’t often see the light of day. Watching Djunberg and Berg’s films, I got a comforting sense that they are artists with a firm grip on vulnerability. In a mini doc about Djunberg and Berg’s process, filmed in their Berlin apartment-studio, Djunberg says, “I don’t think that emotions or feelings should be controlled. They should be felt and looked at. It’s when they’re hidden that they are a problem.” Those words stuck to each other somewhere in the back of my brain while the artists’ visuals flashed before my eyes. Perhaps we don’t get our foot stuck in a solid gold booby trap, as did the gluttonous self inducted king in “This is Heaven,” or dance with an octopus in a glitter bodysuit as in “One Last Trip to the Underworld,” but both allegories are critical for reflecting on the shadows of the human subconsciousness.
Learn more about the show and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery here.
