Taking in a Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg exhibition feels like touring the psychic netherworld, a place as unsettling for its familiarity as for its strangeness. The artists, born in Sweden and based in Berlin, have collaborated for nearly 20 years, Djurberg making sculptures, installations, and stop-motion animations, and Berg providing soundtracks to the films. In “A Pancake Moon,” at Tanya Bonakdar in Los Angeles, the artists summon visitors through the seductive use of all their chosen media into a darkly fantastical realm webbed with potential interpretive paths.

A 6-minute looped animation that plays in the farthest room anchors the show’s narrative; most of the sculptural pieces derive from or relate to it. Djurberg shaped the figures and scenic elements from clay, silicone, and other materials, pressing, pushing, and pinching their rugged surfaces into being. An exception is the main character, who first appears as an anthropomorphized egg with dabbed-on facial features, spindly arms and legs, and curvaceous buttocks. The egg prances balletically in a clearing in the woods, to the lyrical accompaniment of a solo flute. It seems to be taking private delight in its own purity and perfection, proclaiming, via handwritten speech bubbles affixed provisionally to the side of its face, “I’m a riddle… a promise… an adventure.” Also, a meal. Bass notes signal danger as two creatures emerge from the shadowy trees and eye the egg with hunger and lust. One, boar-like, licks its chops with a long, lascivious tongue; the other, a gator-wolf in a white undershirt, snaps open and shut its razor-toothed jaw.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.