TORBJØRN RØDLAND: "Now It Sobs, Now It Sings"

27 Sep - 9 Nov 2024 STANDARD (OSLO)
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Press release

 TORBJØRN RØDLAND

"NOW IT SINGS, NOW IT SOBS"

27.09.2024-09.11.2024 / PREVIEW: FRIDAY 27.09.2024 / 19.00-21.00

 

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Why are you reading this? What is it that makes these photographs in need of words, or what burdens the taking of photographs with the responsibility to tell? What has us looking for an explanation elsewhere rather than be looking at the photograph again? What is it that it invites? What is seen, what is sensed, what is ever so slightly shifted when returning to these familiar forms; the baby portrait, the couple's embrace, or the accident that had the ball flying over the fence and cracking the windshield? 

 

What were the chances? What did the insurance claim report read? Where do we take it from here (now that the car is unfit for the road)? How do we get unstuck? How do we infuse these known objects, faces and bodies with something unknown? How do we instil the still life with a liveliness? How do we erode the expectations of the portrait genre when arranging yet another headshot? How can we alter what matters? How can we allow for magic to occur from matters of facts?

 

What is lost when there is not idleness? What ideas are born of those wary and impatient moments when the hands are resting on the keyboards, when the pencil is tapping the table, when the repetition of the simple facts is singing like a melody, and your whole being is yearning to be somewhere else and doing something else? What words were not written? What is left? What was unlocked? What is the way in? What is it that you know, what is it that you think you know, and what is it that you still wish you knew more about?

 

Torbjørn Rødland lives and works in Los Angeles, California. This is his sixth solo exhibition at STANDARD (OSLO). Recent exhibitions include "Oh My God You Guys", Le Consortium, Dijon (2023); "Bible Eye", The Contemporary Austin, Texas (2021); "Fifth Honeymoon", Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland / Bonnier Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden / Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2019) ; "Back in Touch", C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany; and "The Touch That Made You", Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2017).

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Photography: Vegard Kleven

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