Art review: Torbjorn Rodland mixes the religious with the evocative in NYC show

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Ken Johnson

Torbjorn Rodland’s photograph “Drunken Man” (2014-15) is part of his show, titled "Corpus Dubium," at Algus Greenspon. Credit Courtesy the artist and Algus Greenspon, New York

NEW YORK---A Norwegian artist who lives in Los Angeles, Torbjorn Rodland creates photographs that are formally acute, conceptually playful and psychologically evocative. The most intriguing of the large color prints in his show have eccentric religious overtones. “Drunken Man” depicts a large-bodied, balding and bearded fellow, naked from the waist up and evidently happily inebriated. A young woman is glimpsed to either side of him, and that brings to mind the biblical story of Lot, whose daughters conspired to get him drunk and then laid with him in order to have children and continue the family line. Algus Greenspon, 71 Morton Street, near Hudson Street, West Village, Through June 20 [link]