Malin Norberg

Malin Norberg (b. 1989) is an artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. In her sculptures and drawings she manifests themes commonly found in folklore, cartoons and amusement parks. Her illusory spaces contain portals and props set to the backdrop of ‘reality’, questioning what we choose to see in the natural world around us. Norberg’s surrealist, often existential musings reveal tragicomic plays on anthropomorphism and other cross-border worlds, guiding the viewer through parallel realities to unlock a limitless scope of imagination.

Exhibited works:

When the exit shines brighter than welcome (2021)
A door can be a slippery thing. Deeply symbolic and metaphorical, it can both open a portal and enforce a boundary. It is a partition between two worlds: inside and out, fantasy and reality. It is a physical border that takes us from one world into the next. When the exit shines brighter than welcome contains and illuminates the in-between. The melting transition from one state to another, the boundary between fantasy and reality, life and death, and through the melting of time, articulates an illusory collapse of both sides.

Butter, Trubbel & Living On A Scooter (2021, 2022)
Using the dynamics of animation within the materiality of traditional wooden sculpture, Butter, Trubbel & Living On A Scooter are anthropomorphic figures that bend movement and form into curious characters of their own. The perpetual motion that can be found in hand-drawn animations are rendered in wood with an almost photographic quality, as the bodily details of each protagonist are enlarged, twisted or slumped, as in a distorted frame of a cartoon. The smooth finishes of each sculpture are also physically labored by hand, just as in pre-digital animation techniques.

Spoilsport (2022)
Spoilsport is from a series of sculptures that takes its starting point from the book "Homo Ludens - A study of the play element in culture" by Johan Huizinga (1938), where Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. He describes how games and play existed pre-culturally and how it shaped the human race as a cultural being through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, until the early modern world. These works provoke conversations around work and leisure by exploring the theme of play, its activity and function for a community and the social relationships that the act of play creates.