17 May 2010

Edition Copenhagen presents a lithograph by Jockum Nordström

When Jockum Nordström visited Edition Copenhagen he was well prepared and had brought a whole suitcase full of cuttings. In his characteristic collagelike style he made two lithographs Life is a Tatter and Five Nil. With the title Life is a Tatter (see website) Nordström playfully refers to both the motive a woman standing without any clothes and his technique using paper clippings. Both of the lithographs are in douche colors and show stylized figures in active situations. Motion is frozen and at the same time the figures are active and in odd postures creating a feeling of estrangement.

Swedish artist Jockum Nordström's (b. 1963) paintings, collages and drawings are full of stories. The cuttings are made in a cartoonish style. Simplified figures are set up in narrative compositions often in motion, as the figures are playing instruments, doing sports or participating in awkward sexual activities. Men and women interact in all kinds of situations and social activities. The pictures are flat and the figures are frozen in curious positions, but the sense of action is always present in Nordströms pictures. At the same time there is something strange nostalgic about the social relations. The men are dressed in bourgeois outfits, hats, boots and stylish suits, while the women have their skirts hiked up and their panties pulled down in surroundings of modernist architecture and 19century interiors and old furniture.

About Edition Copenhagen

Edition Copenhagen is one of the leading lithographic workshops in Europe. The workshop was founded in 1959 by Carl Urwald. Today the gallery has three partners Rasmus Urwald, Dannie Vieten and Peter Wissing Sørensen. The gallery is located at Christianshavn in Copenhagen and houses both a lithographic workshop and a gallery space. Each year the gallery invites a number of international and Danish artists to create lithographs in the workshop. The invited artists have all exhibited widely in galleries, contemporary art centers and museums. Besides inviting established artists Edition Copenhagen also aims at working with new and upcoming artists. Among the represented artists are John Armleder, Antony Gormley, Katharina Grosse, Yoshitomo Nara, Chris Ofili, Ugo Rondinone, Thomas Ruff and Luc Tuymans. Danish artists such as Michael Kvium, Christian Lemmerz, John Kørner and Erik A. Frandsen have also worked in the workshop.