Jockum Nordström | När ingen vandrar vägen fram, då vandrar vägen själv sitt damm

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We are pleased to present Jockum Nordström’s seventh solo exhibition in the gallery; När ingen vandrar vägen fram, då vandrar vägen själv sitt damm. The exhibition features collages, drawings and sculptures from the last year, and is presented in all rooms of the gallery.

The collages consist of painted sheets and pieces of paper mounted together, where the details are Nordström’s starting point. Piles of cut out figures, plants and objects grow for a long time in his studio. The backgrounds are painted carefully and can be seen as backdrops, but also have an increasing importance as abstract elements. In the protracted final phase he arranges the definitive compositions. Just a few of the parts are used in something that is as much a reduction as an addition. In the larger works of the exhibition the abstract and painterly interacts with the narrative. They have an unmistakable musicality and humor, but at the same time describe a broken and sad existence.

Alongside the collages Jockum Nordstrom has worked with paper and cardboard sculptures.
Whereas earlier works had a clear connection to architecture, these can be seen as more independent. In a few sprawling experiments, he has joined cardboard parts to make spatial drawings, and in some smaller box-shaped sculptures, he has painted the surfaces with crayon and pencil. It is a world without words where the line between futility and reality is erased.

In recent months Jockum has returned to his drawing, which is the foundation of his artistry. In the graphite drawings the exhibition’s main theme is identified; loneliness. The new work focuses more on memories and less on observations. It is a restrained, uncluttered imagery of contemplation and retrospection.

”Though he’s actually a middle-aged man, Nordström makes work that looks like the invention of a late Victorian child with scant formal training in art. Disjointing things further is his wonky feel for time; it seems to have paused in a fit of despair somewhere between the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1893) and the arrival of rock ‘n’ roll.

[…] This imaginative extravagance can be accomplished by humble methods. Nordström’s materials have a quiet pathos, bound up with their meek insignificance and the delicate things they create. In photographs of his studio, you can see the accidental snowscape of fallen paper that collects beneath his desk as he works.”

Extracts from a text by Charlie Fox in Frieze, June 2015.

Jockum Nordström (b.1963) is one of the most established artists in Sweden. He has exhibited regularly from the beginning of the 90s, and got a international recognition in 2000. Moderna Museet in Stockholm arranged his solo exhibition A Stick in the Wood in 2005. During 2013 the exhibition All I Have Learned and Forgotten Again toured from LAM, Lille to Camden Arts Centre, London. Jockum Nordström is represented in the collections of MoMA, New York, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, LAM, Lille, SFMoMA, San Francisco, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, Hammer Museum, LA, Magasin III, Stockholm, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, S.M.A.K. Gent et al. He is represented by Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, David Zwirner, New York/London and Zeno X, Antwerp. In 2017 he will do a solo exhibition at CAC, New Orleans.