Torbjørn Rødland: Sasquatch Century presents a rich visual flow of Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland’s work, followed by an
introduction by curator Milena Hoegsberg, and a commissioned essay by writer and curator Linda Norden.
Norden’s text, digests the beginning photographic rhythms, and provides an insightful lens to interpret and re-examine
Rødland’s complex practice. As Norden says:
“The question we are left with is less about what to make of a given image’s contents than it is about Rødland’s larger ambition
toward symbolism, or the workings of a post-millennial mythology. These are ambitions that set him apart from his predecessors;
but his photography still trades on the manipulative strategies of advertising and institutional politics that have dominated culturally savvy,
would-be critical photography from at least the Pictures Generation onward. Throughout, the question has been: How might images
that traffic in cultural coding do more than serve as catechisms for the feedback loops that define our moment?”
The title Sasquatch Century refers to the mythical, hairy, humanoid creature historically viewed as the precursor to Bigfoot.
The Sasquatch has been solidified in mythology and pop-culture through a simultaneous belief in and denial of its existence.
As such the 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.
The publication supplements the exhibition of the same title on view at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter January 23 – April 26, 2015.
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