Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Dark Side of the Moon, 2017 (still). Stop motion animation, color, sound; 6:40 min. Courtesy the artists, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles, Lisson Gallery, London / Shanghai and Gio Marconi, Milan.

Dark Side of the Moon continues the artist’s long engagement with the language of surreal dreams and fairy tales to visualize complex psychological narratives of contemporary life. In this new work, the young woman protagonist of the video is at turns tormented and befriended by a cadre of strange anthropomorphic creatures: an unsavory wolf, a ribald pig, a mischievous full moon, and a threatening forest cottage. The circuitous conversations between the characters, amplified by Berg’s playful and enigmatic score, reveal conflicted emotions of desire, revulsion, belonging and exclusion. As in much of the pair’s work, the viewer enters a world that is both terrifying and familiar.