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Jockum Nordström (1963, Sweden) tries to escape the daily speed of communication and technological innovations through his work. He concentrates on a slow and precise process of drawing, painting, cutting, composing and pasting. Inspired by music, folk stories and outsider art, he creates other worlds where imagination and creativity have no limits. Nordström composes fragile collages and graphite drawings in which he evokes a surprising universe populated with old-school sailors, jazz musicians, delicately chronicled flora and fauna, ships and noblemen from past epochs. Through his consistent use of the techniques of drawing and collage, the elegant and carefully composed fragments form a mysterious world, flirting even with the sinister.

Looking at Nordström’s work, these excerpts, and particularly their specific mode of representation, trigger our imagination and stories start to develop like fine meandering lines. Although everyday observations play a role in the formation of the works, it is difficult to tell which elements are based on reality and which are an expression of Nordström's fantasies or desires. The same moving fragility appears in his sculptures, small-scale models of an obsolete modernist dream showing the empty space behind the façade and the breakable, cardboard skeleton. The stories can take the shape of fairy tales, but mostly they take on more complex forms that question modern-day alienation.