Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms are accessible today to all registered users—a new platform that launched as a result of Art Basel Hong Kong’s cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There, David Kordansky Gallery is presenting the work of Torbjørn Rødland, showcasing a range of the Los Angeles-based artist’s practice. The gallery’s Kurt Mueller, shared with Whitewall how Rødland’s analogue photographs can connect in a virtual world.
Niele Torini, Installation view, “Un tout de différences” at Galerie Marian Goodman; courtesy of Niele Torini and Galerie Marian Goodman.
“We miss being on the ground—in Hong Kong or anywhere—but appreciate the creative opportunities Online Viewing Rooms and other digital platforms provide to connect with individuals across the world, especially right now.
Although Torbjørn’s photographs are analog objects made by analogue means, they translate particularly well digitally, in part because they mine the full history of image-making from paintings to print advertising to Internet memes and Instagram. The forms and textures and lighting they depict—sensuous, viscous, and aura-like—brings an intimate physicality through our digital viewing screens. It’s not only sensory; the psychological states these works bridge with viewers are undiminished.
Niele Torini, Installation view, “Un tout de différences” at Galerie Marian Goodman; courtesy of Niele Torini and Galerie Marian Goodman.
The narrative ambiguity and surreal twists of Torbjørn’s often constructed compositions seems all too appropriate, when contradictory feelings and a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar is the new every day.”
— Kurt Mueller, Director, Institutional and Media Relations at David Kordansky Gallery
Niele Torini, “Empreintes de pinceau N°50 à intervalles réguliers de 30 cm”, 2020, 25 5/8 x 39 3/8 x 1/8″, collage and acrylic on foam board; © Niele Torini, courtesy of Niele Torini and Galerie Marian Goodman.
