Rave About... ART!

Hi there and welcome to my first piece of constructed waffle!

My blogging debut is about an artist that I am currently fascinated by and whose work I first enountered at theVenice Biennale in 2009. Nathalie Djurberg is a Swedish artist specialising in stop motion claymation (clay animation).

Her mixed media Biennale installation was made up of videos, music and sculptures and earned her the festival's Silver Lion Award. Walking into it was like walking into a twisted Grimm Brothers story; a nightmare 'Garden of Eden'. All around the room were giant wax like flowers which gave the impression not only that they were alive but that they were moving; dripping slime from their petals.
The main features of the installation were, of course, Djurberg's short films, which are accompanied by Hans Berg's disjointed and unsettling soundscapes. The nature of Nathalie's stop motion films may not be to everyone's taste; deeply dark and perplexingly comic they tell stories with clay protagonists (usually female, usually naked). There is a lot of gore, surrealism and perversion to these films but the are tremendously watcheable. One film shows two characters running through a possessed forest whose trees attack and dismember them, the other shows a woman whose own limbs turn against her, breaking free from her torso to torture and demoralize her. It's dark stuff but it's strangely beautiful and crafted with imagination and skill.

As I see it, art accomplishes something truely admirable when it changes the perceptions of those who observe it. After seeing Djurberg's work at the Biennale (and later on online archives) I felt that my perceptions and my process of seeing and understanding the world has certainly shifted.

To see some of Nathalie's work follow this link: http://www.zachfeuer.com/nathaliedjurberg.html

I hope my first blog has been an enjoyable read.

Emzikles xxx