Diptych: Jockum Nordström and Mindy Shapero at Wexner

Wednesday, 26 July 2006 11:35

Columbus, Ohio - Diptych: Jockum Nordström 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 features a pair of artists whose works relate to one another in ways that also shed light on larger issues and developments in contemporary art.  At The Wexner Center until August 13, 2006 with its presentation of Swedish artist Jockum Nordström 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 22 drawings and collages by Nordstrom and seven sculptures by Shapero includes 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 Isé, 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.”

JOCKUM NORDSTRÖM (b. 1963, Stockholm; lives & works in Stockholm)
Influenced by Surrealism, folk art, jazz music and children’s stories, Jockum Nordström 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 Nordström’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 Nordström’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.  A lifelong resident of Stockholm, Sweden, Nordström was recently the subject of a major solo exhibition organized by the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.  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.