389. Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, ‘Worship’. Signed Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg. Executed in 2016. Animated film, Blue–ray HD and USB memory stick, 8:26 min. Edition 1/2 AP. Total edition 4 +2 AP. Original box 24 x 17 x 4.5 cm. Signed certificate included in lot. (d) Estimate: SEK 150 000 – 200 000 / EUR 14 720 – 19 630
N AT H A L I E D J U R B E R G & HANS BERG Nathalie Djurberg is one of Sweden’s most internationally sought–after artists. She is continuously working on new projects together with her partner of fifteen years, musician and composer Hans Berg, who makes all the music that accompanies her pieces. The relationship between humans, animals and forces of nature is the constant, vibrant theme that occupies their shared universe. Stop-motion animations using clay figures, spatial installations and sculptures form the foundation of their work. Worship was the first figurative video by Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg after their abstract Waterfall Variation which they made in 2014. After roughly a decade of the most diverse puppet videos, they needed to do something else for a while and went into abstraction. To have a different kind of aesthetic and to literally "cleanse their minds”. Since Nathalie Djurberg is a storyteller by nature, she had to eventually return to figuration and her characters and puppets. After that period of abstraction, Djurberg & Berg came out with Worship, a very colourful and
raunchy video reminiscent of MTV music videos from the late 90s (with a pimp whale as one of the main characters) and the complete opposite of the meditative, rather zen–like Waterfall Variation. It was wild, loud and very hip hop! The auction's sculpture Whale in Armchair was created for Djurberg and Berg’s project Worship. The video has been shown in various exhibitions, among them the Neuer Kunstverein in Vienna, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Mart in Rovereto and the Schirn in Frankfurt. "Worship" is also part of the Fondazione Prada's collection in Milan. In the 2017 summer edition of ArtReview Laura Smith reviewed the exhibition Who am I to Judge, or, It Must be Something Delicious at the Lisson Gallery in London: “… Worship (2016), the most explicit of the three works, explores the stereotypes and imagery associated with porn and sexual fetishisation. The eight-
