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    Torbjørn Rødland

    focus26

     

    MARCH 3 – MARCH 28, 2026

    Glentevej, Copenhagen, DK

     

     

  • Born in Stavanger, NO, 1970
    Lives and works in New York, NY, US
     
    Torbjørn Rødland produces his photographs using film-based cameras and chemical processing. His self-aware and often uncanny photographs, films, and books are saturated with symbolism, lyricism, and eroticism. Drawing on familiar visual forms and genres – from still lifes to portraits to landscapes – his works avoid both the analytic tone of early conceptual art and the ironic commentary associated with the subsequent Pictures Generation.
     
    Rather than dismantling images, Rødland seeks to grasp and integrate truth, reflecting his interest in probing the more problematic dimensions of contemporary photography and art history. He examines popular visual languages in search of both spiritual and perverse qualities, aiming to prolong our engagement with still and moving images. His works resist immediate interpretation and instead invite viewers to explore layered meanings shaped by cultural, political, and personal contexts.
     
    Hat on Fire c/w Bathroom Tiles (2016), produced for the 9th Berlin Biennale, brings two contrasting images into dialogue within a single lightbox. One side, Hat on Fire, shows a baseball cap with the words “Make America Great Again” burning in flames. Photographed in January 2016, at the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the image has since acquired an unexpected historical charge. Opposite it, Bathroom Tiles presents a quieter and more ambiguous composition characteristic of Rødland’s introspective visual language.
     
    Together, the images create a tension between topical immediacy and timeless ambiguity, spectacle and stillness. Rather than fixing a single meaning, the work invites viewers to move between them, discovering how interpretation shifts with context, memory, and time.
  • Torbjørn Rødland Born in Stavanger, NO, 1970 Lives and works in New York, NY, US Torbjørn Rødland’s photographs are produced...
    Photo: Emma Jenkinson

    Torbjørn Rødland 

    Born in Stavanger, NO, 1970
    Lives and works in New York, NY, US

     

    Torbjørn Rødland’s photographs are produced through film-based cameras and chemical processing. His self-aware and often uncanny photographs, films, and books are saturated with symbolism, lyricism, and eroticism. They take on existing visual forms and genres from still lives to portraits to landscapes, but without the research tone of first-wave conceptual art or the ironic commentary of the subsequent Pictures Generation. In his work, Rødland attempts to seize and integrate truth, rather than deconstruct it, reflecting his inclination to delve into the problematic aspects of contemporary photography and the history of art. He probes popular visual languages in search of both spiritual and perverse qualities, aiming to prolong our engagement with both still and moving images. His works do not offer quick readings; instead, they invite us to explore the layered nature of each image, encouraging personal interpretations based on our cultural, political, and personal contexts.

     

    Inserting his work in a wide array of contexts Rødland’s pieces can be found in art magazines, like Middle Plane and Numéro Berlin, and in the public sphear, like his large-scale installation on the side of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. His work has also been the topic of traditional solo presentations at art institutions such as Serpentine, London; Fondazione Prada, Milan; MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center; KIASMA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; The Contemporary Austin, Texas; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; Kunsthal Stavanger, Stavanger; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima; and Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art.

     

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    For inquiries, please contact: inquiry@nilsstaerk.dk