Jeremy Olson's Dream Logic World for Hermès

Brooklyn-based artist Jeremy Olson has built his career around combining the ordinary and the surreal. This spring, that vision found a very public home in the windows of the Hermès Madison Avenue flagship in NYC.

Picture a yellow horse figure crawling headfirst into a couch, its head emerging from the ceiling of a retro interior furnished with Hermès accessories. Olson describes the installation as an illustration of a character transiting through space — crawling into furniture in one place and emerging somewhere else entirely.

Heidi Thompson of Global Art Reproduction sat down with Olson to talk about the installation, his process, and the larger conversation about what happens when art reaches more people.

From Instagram to Hermès

According to Olson, the project came together quickly. A contact at Hermès found the artist through Instagram and reached out by email in December. Real work began in January, and the installation was unveiled in late May.

"It's a pretty quick timeline," Olson acknowledged, noting that much of the physical fabrication was handled by TwoSeven, a company that produces Hermès window displays and other high-end retail installations, whose facilities happened to be near Olson's North Brooklyn studio. Olson made the painting and the light fixtures himself. Everything else — the horse character, the bespoke furniture — was built from his 3D models and renderings.

A Painter Who Builds in 3D

Understanding Olson's process helps explain why such a undertaking suited him so well. He begins every painting digitally, building imagery in Blender, an open-source 3D modeling software. He models objects, sculpts characters, lights scenes, and moves virtual cameras around before committing anything to canvas. The painting, in his words, is "more like a rendering phase."

The artwork in the installation, which Olson calls a "playground painting," reflects a series he developed around 2022. As the father of a 7-year-old, he spends a great deal of time in playgrounds and finds in their design a rich and endlessly fascinating subject: leisure space, childhood risk, the aesthetics of play. The painting centers on a tall tower structure full of visual intrigue and open-ended possibility — the kind of image that invites the viewer to complete the story themselves.

Dream Logic as Design Philosophy

The core idea of the window installation, a figure transiting through permeable space, is one Olson traces to a personal fascination with surreal, permeable spaces, what he calls "dream logic."

"It's almost like he's just trying to install a piece of furniture, but ends up going through this kind of surreal transition," Olson said of the horse character. The horse isn't scared. It's curious.

Olson makes still lifes, but of surreal creations — strange, compelling hybrids designed on the computer and painted in oil. His goal is to capture what he calls the desire that attaches to objects "in a formal way, even without understanding what their utility is." You see something that looks cool, and you want it before you know what it's for. He finds that moment — pure aesthetic uncoupled from function — endlessly fascinating, and it's a theme that runs through everything he makes.

"I've long been interested in the way desire attaches to objects," Olson has said. "Working with such an esteemed luxury brand seemed like a great chance to explore fantasy and dream logic."

The Question of Reproduction

For an initiative like Global Art Reproduction, an installation like this raises an exciting question: what if reproductions were available of Olson's artwork inside the window installation?

Olson has experimented with prints before and has a clear, considered perspective on the subject. "If it's going to be an edition, it should be planned for that, rather than being a reproduction of a painting," he said. He wants any edition to be conceived for its final form — a print designed as a print from the start, with its own integrity and intention.

The Hermès window installation runs through the summer at 691 Madison Avenue, NYC.

Global Art Reproduction is an educational resource and advocacy initiative focused on the democratization of art through reproduction technology. To learn more, visit globalartreproduction.com.