To relay the stories behind her films, Djurberg calls on a cast of plasticine puppets, that she models by hand, to lend their help. These figures become vehicles through which narratives travel. However, these narratives subtly transmogrify into intense studies of human behavior at their most crass, reflexive, complex and magnetic.

In “Dumstrut” (Dunce), the boy cowering in the corner seems to be going under an internal suffering even more painful than the cat’s physical ordeal at the hands of his ‘double’. Once the bear in ‘Madeleine The Brave’ has captured its persecutor, the bear confines it to a seemingly never-ending service of attentiveness and petting.

In ‘Viola’, it is a rich young girl, imprisoned within the walls of her perfect rose garden that is visited by an ape- like boy, swinging down from the trees above. Interested only in tasting her cake, the girl (and her watchful maid) mistake the boy’s japing fun for a threat and an encroachment on their principles. He goes through a trial of humiliation and bullying before he successfully makes off with the sugar.

These collections of films speak of deep-rooted fears about what we don’t understand and how violence and cruelty are often our reaction to these blind spots. They also explain how care can turn into dominance. They express the shallowness of our actions, but at the same time illustrate the complexity of the situations we encounter that touch and shape us individually, and on a whole as a society.

Djurberg works with the time-consuming medium of stop-motion animation. It is in these minutely composed sequences and expressions that the artist is able to set about a rhythm of emotional leverage, where she ‘ping-pongs’ our conceptions regarding right and wrong back and forth.

It is this ability to examine our ancient moral fears, while at the same time trampling on our modern political codes of what is acceptable, that gives Djurberg’s art the force to be totally contemporary.

Nathalie Djurberg was born in Sweden in 1978. Past exhibitions include The Berlin Biennial 2006, The Tirana Biennale, Tirana, Albania, and Gio Marconi, Milan, Italy. This is her first exhibiton in New York and her first exhibition with Zach Feuer Gallery. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.