Torbjørn Rødland is nominated for Lorck Schieve Kunstpris 2019.
In the occasion of the nomination, Rødland will be showing his works at Trondheim Kunstmuseum as part of a group exhibition. The exhibition will be opening on Saturday, September 21, 2019
The Lorck Schieve Kunstpris is a collaboration between Christian Lorck Schive and Spouse Trust and Trondheim Kunstmuseum. The purpose of the Lorck Schive Kunstpris is to generate debate and interest around contemporary art by honouring outstanding artists. The art prize was initiated by the Lorck Schive and Spouse Trust. The board is Sissel Lillebostad, Odd Fredrik Heiberg and Ruben Steinum.
Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland (b. 1970) lives and works in Los Angeles, USA and Oslo, Norway. Rødland studied at the National College of Art and Design, Bergen and Rogaland University Centre, Stavanger. As an LA based photographer, he constructs portraits, still lives and landscapes, which simultaneously inhabit, defamiliarize and disrupt the realm of the everyday. By staging scenarios that appear both familiar and banal, Rødland’s photographs are embedded with an underlying lyrism and poetic language that emerges from the artist’s reconfiguration of cultural symbols and imagery.
Rødland’s works hold the viewer’s gaze through a pleasure in the act of looking, as well as the enigmatic and uncertain nature of their meaning. His work often inhabits and plays with the familiar space of commercial photography with its highly constructed, predetermined and at times fetishistic approach to subjects, objects and materials. Several recurring trtpes within Rødland’s images are food like cake, banana, oranges, close ups of body parts and related accessories hands, knees, feet, and torsos are partnered with pads, socks and tattoos, whilst viscous substances, such as honey and paint flow over these subjects. Rødland’s visual compositions initiate a desire and curiosity in the viewer. We are drawn in by what appears to be the candidness of an advertisement but then these images quickly rupture our expectations.
The price exhibition can be seen at Trondheim Kunstmuseum on November 7, 2019.