“Torbjørn Rødland: The Touch That Made You” at Fondazione Prada, Milan is an exhibition initiated and organised by the Serpentine Galleries, London and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Amira Gad. The project brings together a selection of over 40 photographic artworks and 3 videos realized between 1999 and 2016 by Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland.
As Rødland explains, the title “The Touch That Made You” is connected with analogical processes: “the touch of the camera, the touch of the light hitting the film, the touch of the liquids running over the film during processing. I’m linking that to the stickiness and intimacy of certain motifs – these encounters between two individuals or between objects and bodies.”
Renowned for his portraits, still-lifes and landscapes, Rødland intertwines a personal, poetic eye with the formal clearness typical of commercial images, through which he transforms anatomical parts, everyday objects and natural elements into ambiguous fetishes. His works provoke ambiguous feelings of repulsion and attraction, intimacy and foreignness towards the subjects portrayed.
Rødland’s photographs are exhibited on wooden structures characterized by monochromatic, flat surfaces on the inside, and rough, unfinished surfaces on the outside, set up on the two levels of Fondazione Prada’s Osservatorio. The small projection room that concludes the exhibition route features, in succession, three videos shot by the artist over the course of the past decade: The Exorcism of Mother Teresa (2004); Heart All This & Dogg (2004); and I Am Linkola (2007).
Torbjørn Rødland: The Touch That Made You
05.04.2018 – 20.08.2018
Images courtsy of Torbjørn Rødland
Discover: www.fondazioneprada.org
