Torbjørn Rødland, Fifth Honeymoon and Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation Grant Recipients 2018

Torbjørn Rødland
Fifth Honeymoon 
March 13 - June 2

Maria Bonnier Dahlins Foundation Grant Recipients 2018:
Liva Isakson Lundin och Linnéa Sjöberg
March 13 - April 14

Press view March 12, 9.30 am.
The doors will be opened and breakfast will be served at 9.15 am. 

Director of Bonniers Konsthall and curator Magnus af Petersens introduces the exhibition Fifth Honeymoon. 
The artist Torbjørn Rødland is present. 

Maria Bonnier Dahlins Foundation Grant Recipients 2018 will be introduced by curator Theodor Ringborg.
The recipients Liva Isakson Lundin and Linnéa Sjöberg are present.

Please RVSP latest March 5 to:
Klara Rudebeck
+ 46 (0)76 228 06 82
klara.rudebeck@bonnierskonsthall.se

Torbjørn Rødland's exhibition Fifth Honeymoon is a tightly composed exhibition, unfolding across the rooms of Bonniers Konsthall. With the contractual commitment of wedlock and the emotional trip of the honeymoon as metaphorical frameworks, the works tackle themes of religion, spirituality, eroticism and the spark that forms new human relations. Compositional cues, such as repeated pairings and the presence of the number five add to the theme, while Rødland’s tactile image-making also brings forth the “honey-on-moon” connotations of the title: sweet, sticky and liquid sub- stances attach themselves to the symbolically charged objects and figures within the compositions.

A key work in the exhibition is the new film Between Fork and Ladder, shot in Los Angeles and the scenic landscape of Norway’s Lofoten Islands. Objects and visual elements from the photographs re-appear in the video, in which a 10-year old boy performs a musical theater song, while cutting out cartoon images of the controversial meme-figure Pepe the frog from a printed cloth. The ladder suggests a longing for spiritual evolu- tion and personal growth, while the lyrics performed by the young protagonist adhere to a quiet desperation in the face of the open opportunities of life ahead. A Japa- nese anime-styled voiceover seemingly offers edifying guidance, quoting the writings of American philosopher Ken Wilber. The film brings out an underlying tension within the exhibition: between the soft and comforting on the one side, and the desperation of an existential crisis on the other.

The exhibition features color photographs of faces, bodies and tabletop-arranged objects, as well as double
exposures in black and white. The human body appears in Rødland’s work both as portraits and as individual body parts such as hands, feet, ankles, knees and faces—or it appears as staged, typologized “characters” captured in the midst of a telling moment. The isolated body parts are treated in the same constructed way as the selection of objects and surfaces encountered in other pictures.

Rødland’s incorporation of aesthetic categories such as the lyrical, the romantic and the cute is about taking the sensuality of photography seriously, and investigating the seductive qualities of a photographic instant. Thus Rødland treats the photograph as materiality, as a manipulative medium for conveying emotions, and as a socioculturally determined phenomenon in contempo- rary culture. He brings a slowness to what appears on the face of it to be quickly-consumed commercial im- agery (borrowed from advertising, fashion and film). The pictures resist a quick reading, and hold the viewer fast in a visual search which gradually uncovers new layers of both distaste and delight. 
This complexity is perhaps the most defining feature of Rødland’s pictures. With a background in a photographic tradition of the 1990s, Rødland maintains a level of analytical reflection on photography as an object.His practice marks a continuation of and break with the 1980s Pictures Generation, in which “the picture” became the object of complex analysis via critical theory, cultural studies, feminist criticism, appropriation and postmodernist thinking. Even with this background, Rødland is primarily an image-maker. He consistently avoids letting the individual image close in on itself in a self-referential and self-sufficient totality, but rather contributes to an opening-up of the image and its more active involvement in the world.

"I’m not only interested in how images are being read but also in their magic and how they make us feel, how they move us." Torbjørn Rødland

Torbjørn Rødland (b. 1970, Stavanger), lives and works in Los Angeles.

Curated by Magnus af Petersens.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Bergen Kunsthall, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm and KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. The exhibition will travel on to KIASMA later in 2019.

On March 13 Bonniers Konsthall will also open Maria Bonnier Dahlins Foundation Grant Recipients 2018, Liva Isakson Lundin and Linnéa Sjöberg.

From the jury’s statement:
Liva Isakson Lundin, born 1990. Lives and works in Stockholm.

"Through her creative output, she investigates ‘the intrinsic qualities and fictive emotional state of her materials’. Employing steel, gelatine, rubber and glass in her sculptures and installations, Lundin expresses the contradictory nature of the materials’ characteristics – soft and hard, oily and dry, permanent and temporary."

Linnéa Sjöberg, born 1983. Lives and works in Berlin.

"For some time, Sjöberg has been noted in her art for the fact that she ‘time and again immerses herself in the work itself’. Employing various methods, she embodies and adopts different personas and roles over a period of time, for example in The Business Woman, a role she performed for 1.5 years. She also ran a mobile tattoo parlour in her work Salong Flyttkartong and most recently performed as a Viking woman."

Curated by Theodor Ringborg.

Highlights from Bonniers Konsthall's spring program 2019:

Wednesday evening: Artist talk with Torbjørn Rødland
Wed 13 March, 6 pm
Meet Los Angeles-based artist Torbjørn Rødland in conversation regarding his exhibition Fifth Honeymoon. A unique opportunity to hear the artist himself talk about his art. In English.

Wednesday evening: Young Art in Focus
Wed 3 April, 6 pm
Welcome to an artist talk with Liva Isakson Lundin and Linnéa Sjöberg, recipients of the 2018 Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation grants. Afterwards, lounge in the bar and enjoy the music at Bistro BKH with DJ Claudio Solórzano. 

Wednesday evening: Photography NOW!
Wed 10 April, 6 pm
What is happening in photography today and what can we expect in the future? What solutions, concepts and processes do we think will move photography forward? Current research involving photography’s technical and material aspects, as well as the potential of the digital image, seem boundless. It all makes for an interesting discussion on the direction of contemporary photography. 

For more information regarding Bonniers Konsthall's program click here

Publication:
An extensive exhibition catalogue has been produced in collaboration with Bergen Kunsthall, Bonniers Konsthall, KIASMA and Sternberg Press. Alongside a large range of images the catalogue also offers essays by the American critic and theoretician Sianne Ngai and the Norwegian artist and writer Matias Faldbakken.

To schedule interviews, please contact Klara Rudebeck, klara.rudebeck@bonnierskonthall.se +46 (0)76 228 06 82