Nils Ohlsen began working with watercolours in 2003, after curating an exhibition on Lovis Corinth that included the German artist’s oil and watercolour paintings. Taking inspiration not only from Corinth, but also Sonia Delaunay, Ellsworth Kelly, and Callum Innes, among other modern and contemporary artists, Ohlsen has spent the last two decades painting his surroundings and experimenting with colour, materials, formats, and, more recently, media, incorporating photography into his painterly practice. He has created over 2000 individual watercolours, filled 70 sketchbooks, and produced several leporellos, a selection of which will be presented in the Project Room of the Stiftung Reinbeckhallen between April 30^th and May 22^nd, 2022.

Nils Ohlsen (*1967 Oldenburg, Germany) is an artist, art historian, and curator based in Oslo, Norway. He received his PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin and has curated numerous exhibitions and published extensively on art from the Romantic period to the present. Ohlsen was a curator at the Kunsthalle Emden (2006-2010) and the Director of Old Masters and Modern Art at the National Museum in Oslo (2010-2018). He has been Director of the Lillehammer Art Museum since 2018. Towards Abstraction is Ohlsen’s first institutional exhibition.