The Silence AfterwardsIda Lorentzen / Michael O'Donnell

The exhibition The Silence Afterwards presents paintings by Ida Lorentzen (b. 1951) and sculptures and objects by Michael O’Donnell (b. 1950). While Lorentzen mainly concentrates on paintings and drawings, O’Donnel’s production includes sculptures, installations, video works and multi-media works. Despite obvious differences, their artistic practices have much in common.

Lorentzen’s works show silent interiors where all life has ceased. There are no human figures – only objects that form their own communities, as if living on without us. Lorentzen’s eerily quiet rooms suggest that domesticity can be imposed. Such a reading can be understood as a feminist critique of women’s traditional ties to the home sphere.

Lorentzen’s sculptural feature, a readymade examination chair on loan from Oslo University Hospital, reminds us of how human beings are reduced to objects for a scientific gaze. O’Donnell’s large sculptures bring to mind church-like spires, old industrial buildings and machines, but first and foremost heroizing monuments. We sense the contours of something lost, something that once held meaning, but which has now been silenced.

O’Donnell also shows works themed on the death penalty. We see the door of a room where executions take place, and plaques displaying the executed persons’ last words and actions, such as they were interpreted and recorded by the authority that took their life.

In the works of both Lorentzen and O’Donnell, we see traces of objects that remind us of the people who must have been there. We also find criticism of social and political structures that cause people to be silent.

Another feature which the artists share is the flame motif. While a flame flickers in Lorentzen’s painting The Fire Still Burns, O’Donnell has worked for many years with flames as a motif in light-based works, one example being The Fires Are Going Out All Over. A flame can represent the moment when the germ of something new ignites, as a symbol of the human ability to break out and start anew. If we pursue this thought, it is possible to see a shared optimism in the two artistic practices – a humanitarian turn that can fill the empty room, the silent stillness, with new life.

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The exhibition opens 2 May 2026. Welcome!