The dark fairytales of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg come to life in Norway

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg stir up a host of uncomfortable feelings. Inspired by fairytales, dark children’s stories, and the dream world, their stop-motion animations and sculptures feature a cast of eccentric animals and plants. These creatures are at once endearing and unnerving, players within wider explorations of sex, violence, and the subconscious. Djurberg typically works on the visual aspects while Berg composes the music, and the Swedish pair won the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2009.

Their exhibition ‘Death or Eternal Delight’ has just opened at Galleri F15 in Norway. Surreal birds, flowers, and beavers weave through the space. The physicality of their sculptures contrasts with the frenetic movement of their animations. The exhibition is split across two floors, with a lighter, calmer selection of sculptures and moving image downstairs, which gives way to chaos above. The idea of good and evil is inherent, though the artists suggest these two things are harder to separate than we might like.

'The ground floor is quite sparse – for us anyway!' Djurberg tells me, while they are setting up the exhibition. 'It’s white, serene, and the animations are quite calm. Then upstairs is very dark. It’s a lot more intense, there are a lot of sculptures. We wanted this mix where the viewer might be overwhelmed when they come upstairs and want to get out of there. But when they stay longer, they get used to the intensity. There’s a dissonance that we wanted to play with. It’s like a feeling you can have in yourself when you’re caught up in emotions and thoughts. That can start to feel like the normal state of being and calmness can feel uncomfortable.'

The sound is important, and Berg has intentionally blurred the barriers between the physical spaces. 'On the ground floor it's very serene but a little bit eerie,' he says. 'It’s got a glassy, cold feeling which enhances the works. Then upstairs its more visceral: trap beats and bass. It’s bodily, you feel it. I like when you hear the music from the next room; we don’t separate it. We like it feeling overwhelming. In an art context, people don’t often think about the music. You think you’re just there to look at things, but it influences your feelings so directly.'

The structure of Djurberg and Berg’s work is similar to that of dreams. It is fragmented, offering a host of stirring scenes without a strict narrative. Like dreams, it allows some psychological freedom, offering up powerful trigger points and bringing deep, sometimes disturbing, feelings to the surface where they can be explored. While their work touches on taboos and nightmare feelings, it encourages an openness to our emotions so we can better connect with them. 'Rage for example can feel horrendous. If you are afraid of it, it becomes scary,' says Djurberg. 'But if you stay with it, it can become almost like ecstasy.'

For ‘Death or Eternal Delight’, the artists have been thinking about folktales such as ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ and the role of desire. The treasure in the story is stolen goods that doesn’t belong to Ali Baba, but Djurberg points out 'at no time in the story is it questioned if it is right for him to take it'. The illusory fruit and flowers loaded with jewels in the original tale inspired the artists, while the title of the exhibition can’t help but call to mind Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, which is driven by unbridled desire yet has a violent undercurrent.

The artists are drawn to feelings that exist within the cracks or fringes, many of which are difficult to pin down. 'We think that we can put words on everything, but we can’t, we’re limited,” says Djurberg. 'We have names for certain emotions but sometimes you get in touch with a feeling and don’t even know what it is. I like things that exist outside language, beyond what the mind can put words onto.'

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg's exhibition ‘Death or Eternal Delight’ is at Galleri F15 in Norway