In Antechamber, Danish visual artist Lise Johansson brings together works from four photographic series — Resort, Absence, I’m Not Here, and Within Frames — in an exhibition centred on interiors, thresholds, and the unstable relationship between presence and absence.
First presented at In The Gallery in Copenhagen in the spring of 2026, the exhibition will continue at the gallery’s Palma de Mallorca space in September.
The title refers to an antechamber: a transitional room situated between one space and another, traditionally encountered before entering somewhere more private or significant. It is a place of waiting and anticipation, but also one of incomplete access. This condition provides a fitting framework for Johansson’s practice, in which the viewer is repeatedly positioned at the edge of something that remains just beyond reach.
Johansson works with photography as a way of constructing rather than simply documenting space. Rooms, windows, doorways, mirrors, and architectural divisions recur throughout her images, yet they rarely function as neutral settings. Instead, they establish psychological structures. Familiar interiors become slightly displaced, and seemingly quiet scenes carry an underlying sense of tension.
At the centre of Antechamber is Johansson’s ongoing series Within Frames. Here, the idea of the photographic frame is repeated within the image itself. The series grew from Johansson’s interest in ideas of home, belonging, and the spaces we construct around ourselves. Some of the environments are built and staged specifically for the photographs, allowing architecture to become part of the image-making process rather than simply its subject. The resulting spaces appear convincing enough to be entered mentally, while simultaneously containing details that make them feel subtly artificial or inaccessible.
This tension between recognition and estrangement runs throughout Johansson’s practice. A room can appear domestic without feeling inhabited. An environment can be visually inviting while remaining psychologically distant. The viewer recognises the codes of the interior but is never given enough information to feel completely at home within it.
One work from Within Frames has also moved beyond the context of the gallery. Within Frames #2 appears in The Devil Wears Prada 2, installed in the apartment of Andy Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway. The artwork is visible several times throughout the film.
For Johansson, the placement creates an unexpected extension of the ideas already present in the work. An image concerned with constructed interiors becomes part of another constructed interior — a fictional domestic space created for cinema. The photograph exists simultaneously as an artwork and as part of the visual language used to establish a character, a home, and a narrative.
The coincidence was particularly resonant when Antechamber opened in Copenhagen on 1 May 2026, the same day as the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada 2. It placed Johansson’s investigation of the interior in an unusual dialogue between contemporary photography, architecture, fashion, and film.
Surrounding Within Frames are works from Resort, Absence, and I’m Not Here, three earlier series that expand Johansson’s ongoing interest in interiors, absence, and psychological distance.
Across the four series, the interior functions less as a setting than as a psychological space, shaped by memory, belonging, and uncertainty. Like the antechamber itself, Johansson’s photographs offer access only up to a point: the viewer is invited close, but never fully inside. [Official Website]
