The Advantages of Being on the Periphery
Lisson Gallery features Swedish Duo
April 8th, 2025
Walking into the National Base for International Cultural Trade (also known as the Beijing Art Bonded Zone), I’m immediately greeted with Tang Contemporary’s Shunyi branch. I stopped in there for a moment to see Chen Qin’s Mangrove. I also had the chance to view Lukas Luzius Leichtle’s Echo Chamber, which will both be addressed in the near future.
Earlier in the spring, CAFA students were invited to attend the opening reception of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg’s Don’t be Afraid, There are Treasures Behind These Locked Doors by current intern Tenna who is also third year Master’s student in the Design department at CAFA from Japan. The exhibition features an installation of sorts with indigo clad tree stump sculptures sprawled on the ground, mounted on all four walls of the gallery and two of the main characters of their film, a moon and fox, mounted in the corner immediately to the left of the gallery when you walk in. At eye level the fox has the moon is suspended in the air in the fox’s hands with sharp gleaming canines shining in the light.I took a moment to appreciate the sculptures and larger installation, Possibilities Untouched by the Mind, but the sound of the films in the back gallery were calling me.
Sitting down on the left side of the bench for two, I start to watch as A Pancake Moon (2022) is nearing its end. When the film rotation repeated I stayed to get the entirety of the film. I was rather taken a back by the content of the films. They possess a brutality, grotesqueness, and anti-idealism, which made me want to discard them all together. Especially with How to Slay a Demon (2019), displaying inelegant nudity to some degree. Such kinds of art are very rare in Beijing though, so I pushed through and it’s stayed with me for that very reason. My first instinct of the work was that it might be about sex work, but that’s quite obvious. The impact of the “demons” on the screen, all prodding and pocking at the women on the floor, could be the manifestation of her own mind, or that of the outside world (pressures, men, family, etc.). Reading further, the piece leans on boundaries of pleasure and destruction. I for one mainly connected with the destruction more. From what, I couldn’t really sumize.
The two other films were exceptionally odd. A Pancake Moon took the viewer into a snippet of an egg turned moon escaping capture from predators, a nod to the sculpture in the initial gallery. Dark Side of the Moon (2017) takes the viewer into a short tale of a girl who is denied entry to a living house and antagonized by the moon, fox, and fat pig of the prior film.
The claymation of all films help them to maintain a playful nature which allows the viewer to enter them with little if not any guard. Because they are all silent films with a 1950’s flair of written scripts that are placed on screen with the characters’ lines, helps the engagement of the viewer as well. To these ends, I feel that the cinematic choices in production are engaging and successful. The fact that the brutish nature of the films were rather hard to watch, helps the work also maintain their memorability. Kudos to the Djurberg and Berg to these ends.
I also for the most part enjoyed the larger sculpture installation in the front gallery. It is vibrant, vast in material usage, and like a maze to walk through. It’s rare that you get a solo (duo) show, that encompasses multiple media and is wholly not painting.
In the front room, I scanned through their publications from the first show they had with Lisson in their Shanghai gallery. I was disappointed to see Black people’s depicted with colors as dark as tar, and lips so ruby red. I’m aware of the cultural differences between Nordic nationals and Americans. Still, as I said before, disappointing. Seeing that this was an older publication and the Black girl in Dark Side of the Moon is of normal complexion, I’m hopeful the duo has moved on from this kind of making.
All and all, the exhibition was definitely memorable. If not for it’s unorthodox motion-pictures, then definitely for the multimedia grandeur sculptures incorporating gold cast mice and gopher, indigo dipped branches, cloth-painted molded birds, and clay painted bouquets sprouting from each branch. If you have a day, I recommend going to the outskirts of Beijing for the show. You won’t find anything like it in 798, and I say it’s better that way.
Don’t be Afraid, There are Treasures Behind These Locked Doors is on view through April 30th.
