About Sentralen

Stained glass painting by Are Mokkelbost

Are Mokkelbost
Three stained glass windows by Are Mokkelbost cast their colourful light on Sentralen’s two dining areas on the ground floor.

Whether you are a guest or a passer-by, you can experience three large full-covering stained glass panes in the large windows of both the café and restaurant. 

The images are transparent so you can see through them into the interior of Sentralen.

Are Mokkelbost (b.1976) attended the Oslo National Academy of the Arts from 1997 to 2002. He is perhaps best known for his detailed and poetic collages; artwork that is extremely intricate and imposing. He uses materials from magazines and newspapers but has also worked with glass and textiles. In addition to being a visual artist, Mokkelbost is also a musician and composer, and plays in several bands. 

Mokkelbost has exhibited in Antwerp, Paris, New York, Rotterdam, Oslo, Moss and Los Angeles, amongst others. His work has been purchased by DNB, UD, Hydro, Kunst på Arbeidsplassen and Henie Onstad Art Center (through Kunstgaven, financed by the Savings Bank Foundation) to name a few.

Camilla Løw
Above the bar in Marmorsalen, Camilla Løw has left her distinctive mark on Sentralen’s largest venue. Three light installations of neon tubes hang from Marmorsalen's ceiling, right above the bar. These lights are shaped like lightning bolts, and are three metres long. The minimalist and clean expression stands out in stark contrast to the building’s massive, baroque architecture.The work is titled Oscillations, and Løw links its expression to the song of the same name by the band, Silver Apples. 

Camilla Løw (b.1976) attended the Glasgow School of Art from 1998 to 2001. Since then she has exhibited in Edinburgh, San Francisco, Paris, Malmö, Berlin, London, Bergen, New York, Cologne, Athens and Stockholm, amongst others. In 2012 she had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo. Løw often works with bright primary colors and geometric shapes and structures. 

She likes to use the basic shapes of circle, cube and triangle, and several of her sculptures are in materials such as plexiglass, steel, wood, plastic and concrete. 

Løw is represented by the galleries Elastic in Malmø and Jack Henley in New York, and her works have been purchased for Henie Onstad Art Center's sculpture park through Kunstgaven, financed by the Savings Bank Foundation. Løw was the first to receive Statoil’s artist grant in 2007.

Oscillations
- Camilla Løw

The Ikaros Complex
- Christensen & Dahl

Jan Christensen & Marius Dahl
The artwork in Vinterhagen makes active use of the architecture in Sentralen’s physical core, and has a built-in utility function as well. At first glance, the work may look like part of the staircase as it is made of the same material as the banister. The installation follows the banister upwards, but gradually detaches itself and takes several, separate paths upwards towards the ceiling. The work has been given the title Ikaros Complex and refers to the myth of Ikaros, who in Greek mythology was the son of the craftsman and artist Diadalos. Together they attempted to escape from captivity with the help of wings made of wax and feathers. Against his father’s advice not to deviate from the designated route, Icarus flew too close to the sun. His wings melted, and he drowned in the sea below.
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«The artwork can be interpreted as an image that the shortest path to the goal in a creative process is not necessarily a straight line» - Christensen, Dahl.
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Jan Christensen (b.1977) attended the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo from 1997 to 2000. He has a varied artistic expression and works in various media and techniques, including sculpture, painting, drawing and photography, often in large formats. Christensen has had a number of solo exhibitions in Norway as well as abroad, including in New York, Berlin, Oslo, Bern, Bergen, Munich, Kristiansand, Viborg, Moss and Drammen.

Christensen often collaborates with Marius Dahl (b.1969), and together they have delivered a large number of art projects in public and private contexts here in Norway. Dahl has previously lived in Istanbul for 15 years, and has participated in many exhibition projects in Turkey. Galleri Ask, Åsgårdstrand (solo exhibition) and the Scholarship Exhibition 2015 at Buskerud Kunstsenter in Drammen are amongst the places he has exhibited in Norway.

Hanne Friis 
When Hanne Friis visited Sentralen for the first time, she immediately got the idea that she wanted to make a sculpture in gold. The idea stems from both the building’s history as bank premises, where it housed people’s valuables and savings, to the present day cultural building that houses valuables ​​of a completely different nature.

‍«With gold-coloured textiles as a starting point, I wanted to create an open-work that can give rise to many different and contradictory associations and thoughts. It can be about the meaning of value, about knowing the price of everything, but not the value of anything, or the difference between authentic and fake goods. All that glitters is not gold.” - Hanne Friis

The sculpture hangs in the foyer behind The Trustee’s Board Room. The golden strands seemingly seep out of the section where the wall and ceiling meet. As so many times before, Friis plays on the ambivalence between the seductive and the grotesque. The rest of the foyer - walls, floor and ceiling - is in raw concrete, which gives a rough expression in contrast to the shiny and sensual gold sculpture. 

Hanne Friis (b.1972) attended the Art Academy in Trondheim from 1992 to1996 focusing on  painting and sculpture, and is best known for her sculptural pieces in textiles. She works with time-consuming handcraft techniques where metres of textiles are folded, sewn or wound together into compact, organic sculptures that give a sensation of growth and change. Her work has been purchased by several Norwegian museums and collections such as KODE Bergen, Nordenfjelske Kunstmuseum and Statoil. In recent years, Friis has distinguished herself with textile works in several large exhibitions at for example, the Henie Onstad Art Center (2014), Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm (2014), Lillehammer Art Museum (2013) and in The Vigeland Museum (2013).

Growing Gold
- Hanne Friis

The Ocean
- Vanessa Baird

Vanessa Baird
Vanessa Baird has decorated an area on the 4th floor called The Gallery, the passageway adjacent to The Gym.

Here in the passageway called The Gallery, Baird has chosen to paint a mural approximately 10 metres long directly on the wall and around the row of windows. Baird depicts the sea with the horizon directly above the windows and the sandy beach farthest down towards the floor. People and lifebuoys float in the water. Various personal belongings have been washed up onto the beach; suitcases, shoes, jewelry and mobile phones. Someone warms up around a bonfire, and a little girl looks out to sea at those who are swimming towards the beach - and towards us who are viewing the work. The mural elicits strong associations to the enormous tragedies that play out in our seas and waterways again and again, where people risk their lives fleeing.  

Vanessa Baird (b. 1963) attended the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry from 1982 to 1985, and has a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art in London. She works mainly with drawing and painting on paper, in both large and small formats. Her works are often in bright, harmonious colouration, but with a dark and disturbing undertone in her detailed and surreal fairy tale worlds. Baird won Klassekampens Kulturpris /Culture Award in 2013, and was awarded the The Norwegian Lorck Schive Art Award 2015.