Members' Exclusive: Jockum Nordström, David Zwirner
Members exclusive invitation: Don’t miss iconic Swedish artist Jockum Nordström and his surreal collages at David Zwirner London
Members' Exclusive: Jockum Nordström, David Zwirner
Members' Exclusive Launch and Booksigning:
While Jockum Nordström opens at the London branch of the New York powerhouse gallery David Zwirner, across the pond Nordström’s wife Mamma Andersson is hosting her own exhibition at David Zwirner NY. To celebrate these simultaneous shows, David Zwirner is reissuing the 2010 exhibition catalogue Who is sleeping on my pillow, which marked the first time the pair presented their work in concurrent solo shows. Including 200 full-colour plates alongside family snapshots and source materials, this publication gives a fascinating insight into Nordström and Andersson’s practice from the late 1980s to 2010. Don't miss this event where both artists will be signing books!
Culture Whisper members are invited to an exclusive evening of drinks, conversation and booksigning with Jockum Nordström and his wife Mamma Andersson later this month: email marketing@culturewhisper.com to reserve your place.
About the artist
Artist Jockum Nordström is a powerful commodity in his native Sweden. Perhaps best known for his illustrations for the popular children’s story, Sailor and Pekka, Nordström has been tipped as the next big thing in the visual arts.
Jockum Nordström collage
For Jockum Nordström, children’s books are only part of this Renaissance man’s talents. Realising he was allergic to oil paint while at art school, Nordström turned to other materials and techniques, including a pair of scissors. The resulting sculptures, made from cardboard, matchboxes and scraps of paper, delight in the physical process of mark-making and the unsettling combination of childlike purity and adult sexual corruption. These elegant and sometimes disturbing creations are closely linked to Swedish culture and churn with the curious motifs of musical instruments, animals, bits of the body and endlessly quirky characters. The resulting ‘Stills’, as Nordström refers to them, feel like something out of a Salvador Dali surrealist painting or a Dada protest.
Jockum Nordström, David Zwirner, London
You might have spied Nordström’s deceptively simple drawings last year at Camden Arts Centre where his major survey, All I Have Learned and Forgotten Again, delighted critics. In this latest Jockum Nordström exhibition at one of our favourite London contemporary galleries, David Zwirner, we are treated to a new series of fantastical collages, made in a secluded farmhouse studio in the wilderness of Gotland Island off the coast of Sweden.
The title of the show, For the insects and the hounds, is a wonderfully simple, but effective reference to the artist’s dog, which was his only distraction, and to the dead flies that fell from the ceiling. This image of the artist alone in his studio in the depths of rural Gotland is whimsical and romantic, making intriguing comments on the tensions between man and nature, reality and fantasy. In the form of storyboards, these deeply rich tableaux conjure the idea of the strip of a comic book or piece of film.
Exhibition highlights
Look out for the centrepieces of the exhibition – three large-scale works on paper which Nordström based upon the frescoes of medieval churches across Gotland. Particularly special are the floating female figures with rays of light emanating from their forms, which Nordström describes as Gothic Madonnas.
Don’t miss one of the must-see London art exhibitions 2014 at David Zwirner, where suited men ride gallantly on horses and depraved sex scenes are played out. The result is something like a Swedish fairytale gone awry, as childhood innocence is lost to adult desire.
While Jockum Nordström opens at the London branch of the New York powerhouse gallery David Zwirner, across the pond Nordström’s wife Mamma Andersson is hosting her own exhibition at David Zwirner NY. To celebrate these simultaneous shows, David Zwirner is reissuing the 2010 exhibition catalogue Who is sleeping on my pillow, which marked the first time the pair presented their work in concurrent solo shows. Including 200 full-colour plates alongside family snapshots and source materials, this publication gives a fascinating insight into Nordström and Andersson’s practice from the late 1980s to 2010. Don't miss this event where both artists will be signing books!
Culture Whisper members are invited to an exclusive evening of drinks, conversation and booksigning with Jockum Nordström and his wife Mamma Andersson later this month: email marketing@culturewhisper.com to reserve your place.
About the artist
Artist Jockum Nordström is a powerful commodity in his native Sweden. Perhaps best known for his illustrations for the popular children’s story, Sailor and Pekka, Nordström has been tipped as the next big thing in the visual arts.
Jockum Nordström collage
For Jockum Nordström, children’s books are only part of this Renaissance man’s talents. Realising he was allergic to oil paint while at art school, Nordström turned to other materials and techniques, including a pair of scissors. The resulting sculptures, made from cardboard, matchboxes and scraps of paper, delight in the physical process of mark-making and the unsettling combination of childlike purity and adult sexual corruption. These elegant and sometimes disturbing creations are closely linked to Swedish culture and churn with the curious motifs of musical instruments, animals, bits of the body and endlessly quirky characters. The resulting ‘Stills’, as Nordström refers to them, feel like something out of a Salvador Dali surrealist painting or a Dada protest.
Jockum Nordström, David Zwirner, London
You might have spied Nordström’s deceptively simple drawings last year at Camden Arts Centre where his major survey, All I Have Learned and Forgotten Again, delighted critics. In this latest Jockum Nordström exhibition at one of our favourite London contemporary galleries, David Zwirner, we are treated to a new series of fantastical collages, made in a secluded farmhouse studio in the wilderness of Gotland Island off the coast of Sweden.
The title of the show, For the insects and the hounds, is a wonderfully simple, but effective reference to the artist’s dog, which was his only distraction, and to the dead flies that fell from the ceiling. This image of the artist alone in his studio in the depths of rural Gotland is whimsical and romantic, making intriguing comments on the tensions between man and nature, reality and fantasy. In the form of storyboards, these deeply rich tableaux conjure the idea of the strip of a comic book or piece of film.
Exhibition highlights
Look out for the centrepieces of the exhibition – three large-scale works on paper which Nordström based upon the frescoes of medieval churches across Gotland. Particularly special are the floating female figures with rays of light emanating from their forms, which Nordström describes as Gothic Madonnas.
Don’t miss one of the must-see London art exhibitions 2014 at David Zwirner, where suited men ride gallantly on horses and depraved sex scenes are played out. The result is something like a Swedish fairytale gone awry, as childhood innocence is lost to adult desire.
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