Pernille With Madsen
Danish artist Pernille With Madsen revisits and develops her installation for Season One, extending her dreamlike visual language to envelop the vast Riding Hall.
Retaining traces of its past as both a performance space and grain store, the hall becomes a frame through which to explore how we construct and understand history. Toying with notions of authenticity and authorship, With Madsen unpicks conventions to “massage the imagination”.
With Madsen reimagines the Riding Hall as the stage for an archeological dig. Excavating the remains of three grain silos, she unearths the disembodied toes of a classical statue, partially buried in sand. Vast in scale and encased in faux marble, the installation slips between illusion and actuality, sculpture and relic. A doorway, sealed with a gold plate, distils the work’s seductive pull: With Madsen presents an imaginary past, only to expose the artifice that lures us in.
If the fragmented foot hints at an object so large that it can be glimpsed only piecemeal, With Madsen also draws us in on a miniature scale. The artist presents a group of knotted, clawed forms, recalling primordial creatures or homunculi. Presented inside a vitrine, the work recalls a Renaissance wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities which, by collecting rare specimens from across the globe, was supposed to symbolise its owner’s power. These tiny sculptures mock such presumptions – hinting instead towards magical unknowns, waiting to be found.
High on the balcony, With Madsen presents a new film
displays the deteriorating facade of a modern tower block. Blending with the crumbling hall, its torn curtains echo the fractured ceiling. Only one element is exhibited in a pointedly conventional manner: a marble slab hangs alone on the wall. Printed in black and white, the lipless, toothy grin of an ancient sculpture smiles across the veined surface. This image foregrounds themes of decay and memorialisation, and while the rasterised print suggests historical archive, its collaged form gives little away. Unsettling conventions of authorship and display, With Madsen challenges how we read space, recognise images, and orientate ourselves in the present day.
“Western culture is still bound by the ideals of the Enlightenment – believing that we can order and oversee all life. As individuals, we believe in what we are presented with – the earth is round; there are microscopic ‘bears’ that can tolerate -50°F – even if it is not something "we have seen with our own eyes". I want to bring a different kind of attention to organic life, as something beyond scientific evidence. To open the imagination to the fantastic.”
— Pernille With Madsen
Artist Bio
Pernille With Madsen (b. 1972, Funen)
With Madsen is known for her multidisciplinary installations that transform recognisable imagery to upend expectations of time and scale. Born locally on Funen and now living in Copenhagen, With Madsen has exhibited widely and recently garnered critical attention for public works commissioned for Copenhagen Metro and Aarhus University in Denmark (2024).
Her practice frequently engages with architecture through permanent and site-specific works, including commissions for the Copenhagen Metro at Enghave Brygge (2024), Niels Bohr Building, Copenhagen (2018), and Centre for Health, Holstebro (2018). Selected solo exhibitions include Ringsted Galleriet (2019); International Centre for Contemporary Culture, San Sebastián, Spain (2017); and Horsens Kunstmuseum (2010). Her work is represented in the collections of Horsens Kunstmuseum and the New Carlsberg Foundation.