A cool veneer of effortlessness blesses Torbjørn Rødland’s photography, yet very rarely are their origins candid. Plotted and performed, sometimes with collaborators, the Los Angeles-based photographer’s compositions push viewers to look past clichés and at the strange—and its subtler cousin, the uncanny. At Rødland’s upcoming March show at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, “Pain in the Shell,” the artist turns the skin of expectation inside out.

A cool veneer of effortlessness blesses Torbjørn Rødland’s photography, yet very rarely are their origins candid. Plotted and performed, sometimes with collaborators, the Los Angeles-based

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Cultured Magazine: The show's title refers to Ghost In the Shell, the 1995 cyberpunk anime film, and the conceptual project it inspired, “No Ghost Just a Shell,” by Philippe Parrena and Pierre Huyghe.

Torbjørn Rødland: The title is typically introduced late in the process. It helps me in the finishing stages of deciding what to include in a show.

Torbjørn Rødland.

CM: How do you know which ones you'll print?

Torbjørn Rødland: I usually know as soon as I get my film back which images will work for a book or an exhibition.

CM: But there is something here about shells and guts. The apple, for instance.

Torbjørn Rødland: The insides are moving out and the outside is moving in.

Torbjørn Rødland, Apple with Worms, 2021.

CM: One image that struck me was the couple in The Awoken Conscience, (2019). How do you meet couples?

Torbjørn Rødland: One of my recurring motifs is a couple with a negotiable or unsettled power balance. For a long time, I would construct these unequal couples, but this photograph resulted from an open call for existing couples.

CM: How do you feel about Instagram?

Torbjørn Rødland: If my images cannot stand out among everybody else’s, I’m doing something wrong.

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