Jockum Nordström

Jockum Nordström’s collages have been seducing collectors and art critics around the world for a few decades now. Although his collages are demanding in purely technical terms and undoubtedly incredibly time-consuming, Jockum Nordström is a prolific artist. His curiosity and creative delight are infectious; his detailed subjects combine musicians, animals and nudity. There is no snobbery or reserve in his art; instead it is a universe of drawings, paper sculptures, children’s books and illustrations for poetry collections.

It is true that there is a naivety and mischievousness in Jockum Nordström’s work but at the same time there is so much more. Fury, fear of death and weariness seep through the cracks of the carefree flirting, music and games.
At his disposal the artist has a certain training, which can almost be described as old-fashioned, and not particularly common in people born after 1960. Jockum Nordström uses this training as his own unique palette. The work auctioned, ‘Djuren och vi’, was shown at Galleri Magnus Karlsson in 2011. It was part of the exhibition ‘The Donkey Prefers Garbage to Gold’, the title referring to a quote from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who lived at the end of the sixth century BC. The message behind the quote – that something that is considered important to one person may be utterly unimportant to another – is a key to Jockum’s form of expression.
He takes simple, understated materials and uses them to create detailed stories that delight the eye.