Pernille With Madsen | Public Commission | Aarhus University, Vennelystparken

We are please to announce, that gallery artist Pernille With Madsen has been working on another public commission project in the beautiful university parc at Aarhus University, Denmark.
The work is made of no less than 1097 ceramic bricks/tiles, that she has created, burned, and then composed in three different levels on the ground together with her assistant Zuzanna Kozlowska and ‘crew’ from Tommerup Keramiske Værksted.

It is a multi-levelled, tiled installation in the grounds of the parc completed in December 2024. The work, comprised of 1097 hand-built ceramic tiles produced at Tommerup Ceramic Workshop, is built into the gradient of the hill, carved out from the landscape like steps or seats for park-visitors to enjoy.

By night, the work evolves to feature multi-coloured illuminations, using sunlight and shadow to highlight the undulating form of the three plateaus by day and through LEDs as it falls dark. In doing so, With Madsen also points to the shared qualities inherent in these two seemingly disparate mediums: their essential but hidden liquid form. She teases at the connection between the malleability of wet clay, which makes up the distinctive yellow brick tiles of her work and the surrounding Kay Fisker buildings on the university grounds, and the use of liquid crystals to generate colour in LED displays.

The organic form and sandy colour give the plateaus a ruinous feeling, as though part of an archeological excavation or a much larger historic, non-pictorial mosaic that’s been partially revealed. Under the glow of the colourful LEDs, they have a cartographic quality, as though mapping a cramped city from above, or rolling fields.

Interested in learning more about With Madsen’s process? Click here to check out her Instagram to watch the puzzle come to fruition.