Nathalie Djurberg’s imaginary world is made of innocent princesses, naughty girls, and wild animals moving among everyday backdrops and dreamlike landscapes. The characters of her digital videos are handmade plasticine puppets, shot with the old-fashion stop-motion technique. This exhibition, the young, Berlin-based Swedish artist’s first US solo, presents nine works on monitors. But what might look like after-school television specials are for anyone but kids. These works speak about exploitation and evil fantasies: Violence, abuses, perverted sexual behaviors, and cruel impulses are depicted with grotesque irony and deceiving features. Smiles turn into terrifying grimaces, caresses into murders, and creepy manners are hidden behind chaste appearances. The music accompanying the action swings between joyful harmonies and sadistic climaxes, imbuing the scene with a dramatic atmosphere. Although there are way too many pieces for this quite small space, and they are oddly displayed, the works coalesce as a parable of the human condition. A few highlights include Badain, 2005, in which an eighteenth-century black slave (given as a gift to a Swedish queen) performs group sex with three white courtesans and ends up eating a banana; Secret Handshake, 2006, where a capricious princess finds herself having sex with a moose; and, perhaps the best piece in the show, Tiger Licking Girl’s Butt, 2005, which is set in a bedroom, and features a tiger that can’t help but obsessively lick a naked girl’s pronounced bottom. The beast’s thoughts are materialized as a recurring intertitle: “Why do I have this urge to do these things over and over again?”
