Studio Munch House: ROM 61, KMD, UiB, Bergen
This exhibition by Eamon O’Kane emerges from his ongoing artistic research into Edvard Munch’s winter studio at Ekely, a site where artistic production, lived environment, and memory are inseparable. Munch’s studio, and the lingering presence of his demolished house, forms the conceptual core of the project, operating as both a historical anchor and a speculative space for contemporary artistic inquiry. Ekely is approached not only as a physical location, but as a layered environment shaped by repetition, seasonal change, and the rhythms of work.
Presented initially at Rom 61, KMD Bergen, O’Kane’s exhibition establishes the studio as a mutable framework for making, reflection, and dialogue. His work explores how studio contexts, indoor and outdoor, permanent and temporary, actively shape artistic process, influencing material decisions, gestures, and modes of thinking. Painting and installation are treated as expanded practices, informed by historical research yet grounded in present-day experience.
The exhibition will subsequently transform into a group exhibition across Rom 61 and Studio Forum,developed through the Studio Studio module and the KUNO express course Studio Munch House. Bringing together 16 students from KMD and 12 students from art academies within the KUNO network, the project combines individual and collective studio work with critical discussions, screenings, readings, and short presentations that connect historical and contemporary approaches to painting and installation. Working in teams, participants engage with the idea of reconstructing Munch’s demolished house as a speculative centre for art and creativity, an imagined structure through which questions of authorship, labour, and artistic inheritance are tested.
Fieldwork in Bergen and at Ekely, material experimentation, and reflective writing support the development of contextually grounded works that respond to place, memory, and process. In late March, a version of the exhibition travels to Edvard Munch’s winter studio at Ekely in Oslo, returning the project to its point of departure. Here, contemporary works enter into direct dialogue with Munch’s working environment, collapsing distinctions between past and present, solitary and collective practice. Across its iterations, the exhibition proposes the studio as a living structure, one that absorbs history, weather, and time, and remains central to how artistic knowledge is produced, shared, and reimagined.
