Snø Galleri is pleased to present Inside Out by Bergen-based artist Olav Herman-Hansen, opening on April 11, 2026. The exhibition brings together works spanning from the 1990s to the present, including tempera, watercolor, and pastel paintings. Marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in Oslo, the presentation offers an overview of a practice developed over several decades.

Where Time Stands Still

- thoughts continue, or magical realism and dream visions

In a time when the flow of images rolls endlessly past us, Olav Herman Hansen invites us into something entirely different: a slow, quiet world where each motif carries traces of a memory, a dream or a moment that refuses to let go.

Many of his works come from childhood memories—like a blurred film he keeps trying to develop. Memories seen through the filter of time: unclear, moving, and carrying both closeness and distance. Dream visions and fragments flow into one another: a sinking boat, a time that has passed, and a time that takes over—just as imperceptibly as the light that shifts in a room. The stream of time runs through his motifs.

Hansen’s figurative style includes everyday scenes, but also scenes with a dark undertone or dramatic stillness. The poetic works—large watercolors and smaller tempera paintings, create a space where viewers can enter their own memories, dreams, and reflections.

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Olav Herman-Hansen (b. 1935) began his art education at the Bergen School of Arts and Crafts at the age of 17, specializing in printmaking. He later studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and at Atelier 17 in Paris.

Hansen also played a central role in the artist collective Gruppe 66. His works are collected by the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen (including Kampen (1965), lithograph, and Kongens Have (1962), etching) and by the National Museum in Oslo.