Torbjørn Rødland
Sasquatch Century
23 January–26 April 2015
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter
Sonja Henies vei 31
N-1311 Høvikodden
Norway
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK) presents Sasquatch Century, a mid-career survey of Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland. Since the mid-1990s, Rødland has interpreted visual culture in an entirely distinctive way. This exhibition takes viewers into Rødland’s enticing and ambiguous visual language through a broad selection of his photographic works from the past 20 years.
Sasquatch is the name of the elusive, hairy, humanoid creature popularly known as Bigfoot. The Sasquatch has been solidified in mythology and popular culture through a simultaneous belief in and denial of its existence. As such, the enduring phenomenon embodies many of the artist’s interests in activating the tension between myth and reality, between the familiar and ungraspable, and the constructed and authentic.
With an incisive photographic consciousness, Rødland takes on subject matter and motives that have often become cliché-ridden and drained of their symbolic power. He reactivates them, often with very unnerving results. Despite the works’ immediacy, there is always something more—an underlying self-awareness that is difficult to pin down, prompting both self-doubt and curiosity upon encounter.
A richly illustrated book with an introduction by curator Milena Hoegsberg and an in-depth essay by Linda Norden is being published by HOK in collaboration with Mousse Publishing.
Torbjørn Rødland is currently based in Los Angeles and Oslo. He studied photography at Bergen National Academy of the Arts. His work has been exhibited widely since the mid-1990s and was included in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 1999. Between 2004 and 2007 Rødland produced six video works. His most recent photography book, Vanilla Partner, was published by Mack in 2012.
