There are certain people who enter your world and simply shift the paradigm, so unique in their art, they coax something deeply emotional from within you. Isn’t that what art is, actually? This is how I feel about the singularly identifiable Oliver Gustav. Oliver’s fantastical antiquarian eye, gift for composition, and distinctive sophisticated color palette coalesce at his eponymous showroom and exhibition space in Copenhagen’s Østerbro neighborhood. There is such sincere passion, honesty, and timelessness to this series of rooms, which were formerly an art museum.

I’ve obsessed over Oliver, who is described in a multitude of ways—designer, creative consultant, curator, collector, botanist, artist—for years. Whether at his showroom, in an image on Pinterest, or in a shelter magazine story, Oliver holds hypnotic sway over you in a vividly sensorial, richly monochromatic, and tactile trance. I never knew him personally, however, until I came to Copenhagen to shoot his space, but he welcomed me into his museum-like world with the warmest, most jovial open arms; we talked about design, passions, and trusting your intuitive eye as we peered through the camera lens, styling ancient objects from Pharaonic Egypt to contemporary furniture by Faye Toogood and Rick Owens.

Oliver grew up in a collector’s family—his great-grandfather lived in Indochina for twenty-five years, where he amassed unusual historical objects. He also had an amazing sense of color; Oliver thinks that much of his eye was transmitted through DNA. “I believe what I do can be seen as a part of my heritage,” he says. The key to his design approach is never self-censoring, but rather reacting solely from his heart. Oliver doesn’t second-guess, and certainly doesn’t bother measuring or drawing a layout of a room. His mandate is to buy what you love, period. “I never buy an item because it is ‘something’ in someone’s eye. I buy an item because I find it fascinating and beautiful.”

“I never put up restrictions for myself. I buy what I love. I buy items because I find [them] fascinating and beautiful.”

Oliver’s work is a master class on how to play with scale and composition. He engages verticality, maximalism, and texture in vignettes in unexpectedly genius ways. In one instance, a marble column on a console and a textile haphazardly hung as art are situated next to a seventeenth-century African object. In contrast, he deploys an artful minimalism in the next scene: A large sofa sits alone against a massive wall, with a crumpled piece of metal hanging off-center above it. He also plays with perspective, like by placing chairs on top of shelving in his personal office so that he can admire their silhouettes and proportions; it celebrates their beauty over their function, and the unexpected placement creates precisely the intrigue that we all find fascinating.

His vision is thoughtful, guided by confidence and restraint. Oliver envelops your senses with collections and compositions that unite rare antiquities and stark contemporary pieces from designers like Peter Bauhuis and Vincenzo De Cotiis, who he represents. This is his true gift: fusing beauty through the ages and allowing it to be seen as one seamless execution.

“Often people enter the showroom and believe that every item is from the same space, time, or designer,” he says. “But there actually may be a thousand years between an aluminum-cast stool by the Dutch designer Jan Janssen and a prehistoric Egyptian vessel. I get attracted to the same universe, and therefore the pieces still fit together despite millennia separating them.” He also unites these pieces, which span thousands of years, by deploying a muted, dusty backdrop. It is a serene through line in his interiors, unifying his vast and varied collections. The richness of gray allows the colors to come through and sets a dramatic mood. Oliver’s love of botany, trees, and nature is another consistency through the space, and of course, the designer’s personal line of hemp- and linen-upholstered sofas and armchairs act as an anchor.

No matter the origin of each piece, everything exudes the same atmospheric calm and beauty, leaving you wanting it, wanting more, and engulfed in spellbinding contemplation. Oliver leads you on a journey through art, travel, and discovery. He mingles the muted with the saturated, color and shadow, death and life. He finds beauty in melancholy and celebrates the perfect tension between it all.

“I don’t really think before executing, and I never draw a composition.”