A Swarovski Crystal Corn and an Octopus’ Arm

Ten by Ten is Stockholm gallery CFHILL’s recurring exhibition in which the great and most unexpected leaps in art history are highlighted, where masterpieces from all times form conversation.⁠ Participating artists in the present iteration include Amoako Boafo, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Hilding Linnqvist, Marino Marini, Eddie Martinez, Olle Olsson Hagalund, Olle Bærtling, Roberto Matta, Nicolas Party and Fernand Legér.

The show is open daily at the gallery, located in Stockholm at Västra Trädgårdsgatan 9. 

"Humour can break through in a way that being serious can’t. I think humour is one of the smartest ways to communicate." ~ Nathalie Djurberg

Worship (Corn Cob) is a kinetic sculptural work by Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, inspired by an object featured in the stop motion animation Worship. This film was originally part of Djurberg & Berg’s 2017 solo exhibition Who am I to Judge, or, It Must be Something Delicious at the Lisson Gallery in London. The exhibition was described as a show that sought to stimulate multiple senses at once through combined auditory and visual elements. A year later, the stop motion piece was included in the celebrated Djurberg & Berg solo exhibition A Journey Through Mud and Confusion with Small Glimpses of Air at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Djurberg’s animations present a cornucopia of colours, shapes, textures, techno beats and Technicolor, in which subjects such as sex, sadism and carnality produce psychologically-dense scenes rife with humour and irony. In Worship, the female protagonists, dressed like pin-up girls, grind themselves suggestively against a variety of objects, including glittering popsicles and a shimmering cob of corn – the latter serving as the inspiration for Worship (Corn Cob). As the title suggests, this piece is a sculpture, shaped like a cob of corn, complete with green husk and covered with corn-yellow Swarovski crystals, the alluring sparkle of which is further enhanced by the rotations of the work.

Nathalie Djurberg (b. 1978) and Hans Berg (b. 1978) are a Swedish artist duo. They have worked together since 2004 and are based in Berlin. Djurberg is famous for her stop motion animations of clay puppets, which often feature graphic violence and sexual undertones. The films are accompanied by music composed by Hans Berg, and the collaboration between Djurberg and Berg adds further dimensions to the symbol-laden and humorous narratives of the pieces. The duo has previously shown their work at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), Wanås Konst, Knislinge, the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennale, and many other venues. Their work is represented in major collections, including those of the Prada Foundation in Milan and the MoMA in New York.

"A gallery space is a bit like a theatre; people come to the same space to see very singular stories, and in order to make the public believe in the world of the story, you need to build a set that makes you forget where you really are. I cannot put actors on a blank stage. They need a set." ~ Nicholas Party 

Nicolas Party (b. 1980) depicts conventional subjects, such as landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, but there is always an element of the unexpected in his work, something that works to stimulate and generate deeper thought. Party’s oeuvre often lingers in the borderlands between past and future, between science fiction and symbolism, and incorporates touches of film noir aesthetics.

Party has made Marble Leftovers out of marble, a material that brings the mind to sculptural practice and décor. In the piece, the marble serves as a decorative backdrop for a variety of objects, including an octopus’ arm, a fly, an eye, a foot, fishbones and a snail. The objects appear to have been spontaneously arranged on the marble, and their placements within the composition elevates them from their everyday roles as leftover objects to that of prized and valuable. The permanence of marble, and its historical connotations, contrast with the ephemeral, limited nature of the various depicted objects, although here, in the rock, their forms, which are set to last forever, take on the guise of a kind of documentation of our own times for the ages. Associations are readily made both to fossils and to the mosaic floors that have been preserved from the Roman age, with their beautiful patterns and details.

Nicolas Party was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1980, and is based in New York. His works have been featured in a series of significant solo and group exhibitions at venues like FLAG Art Foundation, New York, M WOODS, Beijing, and the Magritte Museum, Brussels. Party’s works are also included in the collections of Kunsthall Stavanger, Kunsthaus Zürich, Long Museum, Shanghai, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LVMH, France, Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, Masahiro Maki Foundation, Tokyo, and other institutions.

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