COLUMBUS, OH.-Diptych: Jockum Nordstr鰉 and Mindy Shapero is the first in a compelling new series of two-person exhibitions focusing on up-and-coming and mid-career artists. Each Diptych exhibition will feature a pair of artists whose works relate to one another in ways that also shed light on larger issues and developments in contemporary art. The Wexner Center presets this series through August 13, 2006 with its presentation of Swedish artist Jockum Nordstr鰉 and Los Angeles-based artist Mindy Shapero. Both artists use materials such as paper, pencil, and glue—the stuff of children’s arts and crafts—to create imagined fantasy worlds. This exhibition of approximately 20 drawings and collages by Nordstrom and seven sculptures by Shapero will include new work produced by both artists.

The idea of the diptych, a two-part painting executed on separate panels, provides the series with its guiding curatorial conceit. Each part of the diptych is complete unto itself, but when presented side-by-side they form a larger picture. Notes Claudine Is�, curator of Diptych, “Unlike most two-person shows, the artists in this series have no prior relationship to one another, nor is there a preexisting context for viewing their works in tandem. We hope to cast new light on current artistic practices by bringing together artists whose work may at first seem dissimilar, but on further reflection share much in common.” A full-color, illustrated brochure with an essay written by Is� about the work of Nordstr鰉 and Shapero will accompany the exhibition. The next Diptych presentation is scheduled for the spring of 2007.

JOCKUM NORDSTR諱 (b. 1963, Stockholm, Sweden; lives and works in Stockholm). Influenced by Surrealism, folk art, jazz music and children’s stories, Jockum Nordstr鰉 makes graphite drawings and paper collages featuring characters, settings, and visual motifs that spring entirely from his own imagination. Themes of art, music, sex, and nature are a constant in Nordstr鰉’s works, which often show men in top hats and business suits and women in full-length gowns and feathered hats frolicking or fondling each other, often in groups. The loose placement of figures and objects within Nordstr鰉’s colorful compositions gives them a sense of buoyancy, as if we are witnessing the momentary triumph of leisure, play and carnality over the dull rigidity of the workaday world. The artist’s use of flattened compositional spaces and impossible shifts of scale tweaks the viewer’s sense of what is real and what isn’t: a fish may appear to be as large as a boat, an apartment building as small and portable as a child’s toy. A lifelong resident of Stockholm, Sweden, Nordstr鰉 was recently the subject of a major solo exhibition organized by the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. His drawings have also been shown in major group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London.

MINDY SHAPERO (b. 1974 Louisville, Kentucky; lives and works in Los Angeles)
Mindy Shapero, like Jockum Nordstr鰉, insists on the importance of giving fantasy free reign over logic and rationality. Using simple materials such as paper, wood, and acrylic paint, Shapero creates drawings and three-dimensional objects that give physical form to things that tend to elude description, such as the visions one sees in dreams, psychedelic experiences, and other altered states of consciousness. Shapero’s Diptych presentation will focus exclusively on her sculptures. Sometimes crude and wonky, other times delicate and airy, these works defy categorization. Many appear painfully fragile—perched wobbily on stilts, as in the 2003 sculpture Fog, or tilting vertiginously to one side, as in the piece titled Smoke bomb (exists behind your eyes and you only see it when you die and then it releases all phylogenetic memories), also from 2003. A key aspect of Shapero’s work is her use of lengthy titles that read like poetic vignettes or stream-of-consciousness musings. To a greater extent than is usual for most artists, Shapero’s titles are extensions of her sculptures: both attempt to describe phenomena or experiences that are largely ineffable in nature.
Shapero received her MFA from the University of Southern California in 2003. Her work has been shown as part of numerous national and international group exhibitions, including at the Orange County Museum of Art, where she was featured in the museum’s 2004 California Biennial exhibition.

THE CURATOR - Since joining the Wexner Center as associate curator of exhibitions in February 2004, Claudine Is� has curated the noted group show Vanishing Point as well as Particle Theory, a three-person exhibition of contemporary sculpture. Prior to joining the Wexner Center, Is� was assistant curator of the UCLA Hammer Museum, where she organized a number of solo exhibitions for the Museum’s celebrated Hammer Projects series, including presentations by Tomoko Takahashi, Amy Adler, and Frances Stark, among others, and co-organized the group exhibitions International Paper: Drawings by Emerging Artists and Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles. Is� has also worked as an arts writer for the Los Angeles Times and holds a Ph.D. in Film, Literature and Culture from the University of Southern California.