This Artist Just Gave a Hermès Store Window a Whimsical Makeover
By Vittoria Benzine
Every year, Hermès builds on its eight-decade history of artistic window displays by inviting another creative to stage a temporary installation in a vitrine at its Madison Avenue flagship. This year, Hermès tapped Brooklyn-based painter and sculptor Jeremy Olson for the honor. Olson transformed the refurbished mansion’s street-side nook into a fashionable retro abode “where the membrane of the built environment becomes permeable,” as Hermès put it.
“Hermés exists in an almost entirely different universe than I’m a part of, so I was pleasantly surprised when they approached me,” Olson told me over email. “I’ve long been interested in the way desire attaches to objects, so working with such an esteemed luxury brand seemed like a great chance to explore fantasy and dream logic.”
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Olson at work on his Hermès window. Photo: © Courtesy of Hermès.
The Ojai-born Olson has steadily exhibited art since earning his MFA from New York University in 2009. He’s done group shows from New York to Antwerp, and solos from Melbourne to Miami. The evolution of his art has been similarly winding. Olson’s portfolio reveals that he’s always favored a graphic aesthetic. Around 2017, though, his paintings started softening into the dreamlike hyperrealism that he began perfecting around the early 2020s. Olson’s fantastical creatures appear to have entered his work around then, too.
His latest paintings—namely those Mindy Solomon showed at her Miami gallery this month—focus on a delivery driver named Meg. Olson has seemingly rendered the little moments of Meg’s futuristic city life in cinematic portrait mode.
The artist’s Hermès window has a protagonist, too: a yellow horse who’s peering into a couch as if it has dropped something. The horse’s head, then, pops out of the ceiling, defying consensual reality. This equine has style. Its room is smartly appointed, littered with Hermès wares spanning a Chromatic paper basket, a Cape Cod watch, a throw pillow, a pair of Jet sneakers, a green WRTW jacket, a Miles Jacron H cap, and a Samarcande mini chess set—if you can spot them all. Hermès chose these with input from Olson.
Swatches and mock ups for Olson’s Hermès window. Photo: © Courtesy of Hermès.
Olson and artisans created every other element of this installation bespoke. “I made the painting and the light fixtures myself,” he told me, “but the character and the furniture were fabricated by Hermès’s longtime fabrication collaborators, TwoSeven, based on 3D models and renderings that I created.” The wallpaper draws from an extant Hermès scarf.
“Almost everything about this project was a departure from my normal practice,” Olson wrote. He’s far more used to working alone.
“People who’ve followed my work may recognize I’ve played with the portal idea before,” he continued. “The horse character is a bit more of a muppet than the figures in my paintings, but is definitely related.” The paintings in the space, meanwhile, harken back to the playground paintings Olson was making a few years ago. “Finally, friends will know that I’ve been designing and making lamps of late, so it was cool that I was able to include my own lighting designs,” he added.
This is Olson’s first time ever making public art, which Hermès’s Vitrine d’artiste program definitely is. He reckons he’d like to continue.
This article was originally published by Artnet News.