A Thief Caught in the Act

Giò Marconi announces A Thief Caught in the Act, third solo exhibition at the gallery by Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg.

Ten years after their debut at Giò Marconi, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg have returned to the gallery space and have transformed it into a mysterious landscape inhabited by colourful bird sculptures on tables and enigmatic black and white waterfall animations.
In this new body of work the artists continue their play with light and shadow but with a more theatrical impetus. At Giò Marconi the scenery is lit very dramatically: the dark exhibition room is populated by 7 wooden tables that do all come with a spotlight which illuminates several differently sized and coloured birds with small pills. These spotlights do all switch on and off at varying intervals. When turned on, the visitor becomes a witness of the robbery that is taking place right in front of his eyes: all birds have multi-coloured little pills in their beaks which they are about to steal – they are all feathered thieves caught in the act: there is a parade of six seemingly dancing smaller birds that appear to be surprised by their discovery and that seem to run away from the crime scene; a big blue pelican strides away gingerly with his loot in his beak whereas a dark brownish owl seems to pause and reconsider her deed; a bright red and orange bird on one leg almost falls off the table while trying to escape the crime scene…
Their facial expressions are manifold but their actions are always the same: to flee their discovery and the nosy glance of the beholder and to leave their sites of crime behind.

Besides the bird sculptures several new videos are on display.
Upon entering the gallery space the visitor gets immediately dragged into Djurberg and Berg’s world – 4 new charcoal animations with colour blocks and sound are being projected onto the entrance wall of the gallery. In these “Waterfall Variations”, Djurberg applies her characteristic stop motion technique and has flowing and sputtering waterfalls running through exotic landscapes populated by lush palm trees, delicate bonsai trees or dark fir tree forests.
The various colour blocks that are slowly gliding over the landscapes make the black and white scenes less gloomy and leave the viewer with a sense of meditative calmness.
Hans Berg’s music perfectly translates the movement of the water into sound and shows a broad spectrum from lively, sparkling and almost nervous cadences to darkly gurgling, intensely melancholic and solemn parts to very zen-like intervals.

A Thief Caught in the Act is a body of work that was initially developed for the ARoS Museum in Aarhus, Denmark. The exhibition in Aarhus will inaugurate on October 22nd and a second set of birds will be on display in the Danish museum.

The exhibition at Giò Marconi will run concurrently with several group exhibitions in Milan which showcase works by Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg:
The Great Mother, curated by Massimiliano Gioni at the Fondazione Trussardi; Arts and Foods, curated by Germano Celant at the Triennale Museum; An Introduction at the Fondazione Prada.