Chromophilia
Oslo Prosjektrom
5th February to 28th February 2026
Vernissage 5th February, 6.00pm
The concept of chromophilia can be understood as a counter-position within Western art and taste history, where color has long been associated with the ornamental, the vernacular, and the low-valued. To work chromophilically means to take color seriously as structure, experience, and a form of knowledge—challenging the idea of neutrality as a norm.
The exhibition Chromophilia brings together painting, textile, and embroidery in a shared movement. Three cloths, first painted and later continued through embroidery in collaboration with different women, function as dialogues shaped by togetherness, slowness, and conversations carried out through needlework. The cloths are inherited or found in second-hand shops and carry collective memories connected to everyday life, childhood, and family. Through this collaboration, the artist relinquishes control over the final expression, and painting shifts from an individual to a relational space.
In dialogue with these works, a series of paintings on canvas explores the relationship between nature and architectural structures—between human intervention, the desire for control, and nature’s slow reclamation. The paintings are based on the artist’s own photo archive—snapshots from various places and travels—selected intuitively and reworked through simplification and altered color palettes. This intensifies the atmosphere and creates displacement, opening the motifs toward a more spatial and poetic pictorial space.
A wall painting activates the room and ties the works together into a whole. Across materials, places, and processes, connections emerge between the intimate and the geographically distant—from Finnmark to Oslo, from Norway to Togo.
Photo: Bent René Synnevåg