JOCKUM NORDSTRÖM

Jockum Nordström (b. 1963, Stockholm) tries through his work to escape the daily pace of communication and technological innovations. He concentrates on a slow and meticulous process of drawing, painting, cutting, composing and gluing. Inspired bymusic, folk tales and outsider art, he creates other worlds in which the imagination and creativity have no limits. The collages seem to conjure up bygone times but also to evoke a new and particular world. Although everyday observations play a clear role in the emergence of the works, it is often difficult to find out which elements are based on reality and which are an expression of Nordström’s fantasies or desires. Through the flat accumulation of the collages, each work could be a fragment from a puppet show.

Specific to this exhibition are the abstract collages that Nordström is displaying for the first time. These works are strongly reminiscent of Nordström’s cardboard sculptures; they are often made of pieces of matchboxes and function as architectural models. The sculptures also refer to the dreary modernist blocks in the suburbs of Stockholm, where Nordström grew up. The collages could be floor plans of interiors, but they could just as well refer to envelopes and folded letters. Moreover he was inspired by a black and white book on African tapestries and textile patterns.

Jockum Nordström will hold a solo show in 2018 at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. He has had solo exhibitions at LaM, Musée d’Art Contemporain et d’ArtBrut in Lille, at the Camden Arts Centre in London, the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. His works have also featured in group exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, MoMA in New York, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, SFMOMA in San Francisco, S.M.A.K. in Ghent, the Albertina in Vienna, and many more.