The Donkey Prefers Garbage to Gold: Jockum Nordström & Marcel Dzama
Galleri Magnus Karlsson is pleased to present the exhibition The Donkey Prefers Garbage to Gold by Jockum Nordström and Marcel Dzama. The exhibion consists of individual works by the artists but also collaborations.
Jockum Nordström and Marcel Dzama met for the first time in the fall of 2000 at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York. This was Jockum’s first exhibition in the US and his drawings were shown together with the works of Marcel Dzama. Ever since then the two artists have kept both professional and private contact and they have spent time together in Mexico, New York and on the swedish island Gotland. For this exhibition they have both made a solo show, but they have also sent drawings and clippings back and forth over the Atlantic ocean. A group of collaborative collages will now be shown for the first time.
This is the 6th solo exhibition by Jockum Nordström (born 1963) in the gallery. The exhibition contains collages and sculptures made in the past year. This time the characters and the separate parts have been the starting point rather than the idea of the final composition. In some kind of failed attempt to organize, people, animals and objects are placed in systems and chains – rebus-like imagery where the painterly qualities plays an important role. The sculptures are abstract compositions where the artist has used recycled old matchboxes and cardboard boxes given unexpected balance.
In the past years, Jockum Nordström has participated in exhibitions in the US, Ireland and France; Who’s sleeping on My Pillow (together with Mamma Andersson), David Zwirner gallery, New York, While the Mortar Dries, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin and The Swedish Institute in Paris. In 2012 a solo exhibition is scheduled at LaM in Lille, France.
Marcel Dzama (born 1974) is originally from Winnipeg, Canada, but lives and works in Brooklyn , New York. This is Marcel Dzama’s 4th solo exhibition in the gallery. In the exhibition Dzama shows the film A game of chess together with watercolors and collages linked to the subject. Dzama has drawn inspiration from the classical chess game, its characters and the graphical black-and-white system.
The film, which is shot in black-and-white, is inspired by set designs, art and films from the 1920’s and combines ballet sequences, surrealistic dreams and realistic scenes. Dzama has created geometrical costumes and masks in papier maché, plaster and fiberglass which are worn by the dancers in the film and also appears as motives in the works on paper.
Marcel Dzama has recently had a solo exhibition at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montréal, Canada, an exhibition that is now touring. There is also a solo presentation by him currently showing at Gemeente Museum of Contemporary Art in Haag.
View the trailer for the film at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6mySi-vCHs
