Jockum Nordström’s drawings, collages, illustrations and books are appreciated all over the world. With paper, scissors, pencil, watercolour and crayon, he creates an entirely personal pictorial world where childhood memories merge with the adult world, imagination and dreams.

The exhibition Without Lantern at the Skissernas Museum presents sculptures, collages and sketches, and focuses on Nordström’s artistic process. Much has been brought directly from his studio and has never before been shown. In the collages, images cut from magazines and books meet each other in new contexts. In other works, sheets of paper saturated with colour have been folded into large “fortune tellers” with secret content. Nordström builds architectural dreams out of old matchboxes, and in the cardboard sculptures he depicts the architectural vision of modernism. Several of the exhibition’s matchbox sculptures relate to a new project, Triumfbåge för halta (Triumphal Arch for the Lame), a large concrete sculpture planned for a new residential area in Stockholm.

The exhibition’s centrepiece is the large shadow play installation The Anchor Hits the Sand (2019), shown here for the first time in Sweden. Nordström’s characteristic paper figures emerge on a screen of semi-transparent paper in an ever-changing play of light and shadows. The reverse side of the installation offers an insight into the mechanical design of this completely analogue work – don’t miss it! The music, a sound collage composed by Rudolf Nordström, using a collection of old 78 rpm records, enhances the magical atmosphere. The Anchor Hits the Sand has previously been shown at David Zwirner’s London gallery in 2019. In connection with the exhibitions, the sound collage The Murray Collection is released as a vinyl record with a cover by the artist. The album and several of Nordström’s exhibition catalogues and picture books are sold in the Museum Shop.