ANTWERP.- Tim Van Laere Gallery presents Myrstackarnas land / Land of Anthills, the first solo show of new and recent works by the celebrated Swedish artist Jockum Nordström at the gallery. This exhibition brings together a rich constellation of Nordström’s intimate collages, evocative pencil drawings, and delicately balanced mobile sculptures.
We have all, at some point, been captivated by an image, moved by its resemblance to something in our memory. Memory is malleable, whimsical and at times tangible. Memory images point to something beyond oblivion. In the case of an artist, this can consist of the inadvertent borrowing of a detail from a certain artwork in the form of a subconscious memory of a composition the artist has once seen. The work is created anew when the composition is reused in the present. It is validated, perhaps as a sign of admiration towards the other artist. Jockum Nordström does a lot of validating in his works. He is especially responsive to everything having to do with Swedish drawing over the ages, spanning from the Swedish historical narratives of the 1700s, to the humorists of the 1800s and the naïveté and down-to-earthness of the 1900s. Nordström’s knowledge offers him a sense of humility, both in the face of the committed approach of his predecessors as well as their unconditional desire to create. A desire that Nordström clearly shares.
His studio is overrun with fragments of memories left behind, in a book, an envelope, a label, an album cover, a drawing, a delicate collage, a fragile sculpture... everything draped in memories, as though it is the memories themselves that have been left behind. Erased. The fragments are then compiled into new images, new memories, where everything has the possibility of taking place once again. Into new events to remember when Nordström by chance passes by something; a building facade, a person, a conversation, an exhibition. Nordström’s world and everyday life is analogue, and social media doesn’t interest him in the least. Rather than directing rage towards the clarifying ones and zeros, Nordström depicts profound human adventures that we can relate to in time and space. A staircase that leads to nowhere. An interrupted conversation. If it indeed is the case that the figures in the drawings have ended their conversation, it is no doubt due to the fact that they no longer encounter each other's gazes. Everything has been said, everything is a memory, everything is the future.
Jockum Nordström was born in 1963 in Stockholm, where he continues to live and work, alongside his studio in Gotland. He has exhibited regularly since the early 1990s, and started to receive international recognition in 2000. He has had several solo exhibitions in Sweden and beyond. These include: A Stick in the Wood at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2005); All I Have Learned and Forgotten Again at LaM, Villeneuve d’Ascq and Camden Arts Centre, London (2013); Why Is Everything a Rag at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (2018); Without Lantern at Skissernas Museum, Lund (2020); Pour ne pas dormir at La Criée centre d’art contemporain, Rennes (2021); No Paper, No Coins at Liljevalchs+ in Stockholm (2023).
Nordström’s work is held by museum collections in several countries including: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; ; the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (S.M.A.K.), Ghent; LaM, Villeneuve d’Ascq. Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenburg; Helsingborgs Konstmuseum; Magasin III, Stockholm; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Nordisk Akvarell- museet, Skärhamn; Skissernas Museum, Lund; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles;San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Text by Carl Fredrik Harleman
