The gallery will open on February 19 with two solo exhibitions by Martin Kippenberger and Jockum Nordström.
Jockum Nordström (born 1963) lives and works in Stockholm. This will be his second solo show with the gallery. In October 2002, he will be included in Eight Propositions in Contemporary Drawing, an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York organized by Laura Hoptman.
Jockum Nordström's drawings and collages juxtapose images inspired from the past and the present. Floating in a rich texture of form and color, a series of recurrent images appear. Nature is evoked with a reflection on the four seasons, light, trees, animals and other motifs from nature typical to art from northern Sweden. At the same time, and as important, are the representation of urban landscapes, factories, musical settings, interior scenes and human couples in sexually explicit situations. With a homage to textile patterns and Folk art, his style remains very personal.
The artist's signature combination of graphite drawings and collages are the result of a particular process which involves drawing, then painting, then erasing and then cutting. Rather than following a preconceived plan, the artist's process is a back-and-forth rhythm until he is satisfied with the result. Largely autobiographic, the work draws also from experiences and images that the artist finds in books, music, and photographs.
Concurrent with an exhibition of painting, sculpture and photography by the German artist Martin Kippenberger at Zwirner & Wirth (32 East 69th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues) will be an exhibition of Martin Kippenberger's Hotel Drawings in gallery 3 of David Zwirner in SoHo. Kippenberger (1953-1997) was an extremely versatile artist and a consummate draftsman. During his life, the artist made hundreds of drawings on hotel stationery, which he once called an "autobiography in sketches". The imagery in these drawings is quintessentially post-modern: no subject matter, high or low, remains untouched in the universe of these ironic and poignant Hotel Drawings. The drawings certainly establish Martin Kippenberger as one of the great draftsmen of his generation. Both exhibitions show the complexity of Kippenberger's oeuvre and give insight into the artist's obsessions, preoccupations, ideas and creative process.