Larghetto

The term larghetto is used in musical notation for a relatively slow playing tempo. The association between music and visual art is informed by Jockum Nordström’s background as a musician, and he invites the viewer to contemplate the depicted characters slowly and leisurely.
For his 2024 etchings Nordström limited himself to a palette of three colours; in Larghetto, however, he replaces the green with a bright yellow. Compositionally, Nordström does not place his figures in one of his melancholic, surrealistic architectural settings, but instead renders them as portraits that seem to float in a vacuum, like old-fashioned portrait photographs or the cast of an opera unknown to the viewer.