Andreas Siqueland (b. 1973) has, for several years, made use of his immediate surroundings to explore the relevance of painting. He has been interested in the connection between painting and geographical places and has studied how the relationship to a particular environment can influence the artistic process. In the exhibition "The Forbidden Forest," Andreas Siqueland challenges the museum's presentation of Halvdan Hafsten's collection. Instead of hanging the paintings side by side with explanatory texts, as the museum often does, Siqueland creates an artistic space for the images that highlights their painterly qualities. We enter a visual landscape where the museum's seemingly neutral white walls have been transformed into vast painted landscapes.

The relationship between private and public spheres is central to the exhibition. Siqueland has been inspired by the collector Halvdan Hafsten and his private home at Grefsen in Oslo, where he lived surrounded by his collection until it was given to the Stavanger Art Museum in 1984. In contrast to the museum's focus on the artworks detached from the collector, Siqueland lets this relationship be the starting point for an artistic investigation. Paintings and objects stage a dream-like state, a place between sleep and wakefulness. In such a state, linear time ceases, and all possibilities are open.

The visual encounters between older and newer works invite us to see painterly connections and to explore the meaning of the painted landscapes. The exhibition emphasises that the museum is also a scenographic space where our experience of places is linked to architecture and the given location as well as to our own state of being. With a sleepwalker’s gaze, we are taken on a journey where the relationship between time and space, and inside and outside, has shifted.