How do we perceive color? It is the characteristic of visual perception described through categories with names such as yellow, green, red. The perception of color derives from the stimulation of photoreceptor cells, in particular crone cells in the human eye, by electromagnetic waves radiating between two surfaces. Yet, this technical description does not explain the memory of a specific color when reminiscing a specific evening by the countryside, how we experience colors differently or even that we see colors in our dreams.

In a series of new paintings, Mads Gamdrup continues his lifelong occupation with color research yet moving into a radically new direction both formally and visually speaking. Each painting elaborates on Gamdrup’s interest in monochrome color and its artistic potential in relation to phenomena such as materiality, both physically and psychologically. Working with raw color pigments in the extended field of contemporary art, color can be perceived as a material substance with abstract qualities, giving the pictorial expression a spatiality that opens up, allowing for an individual interpretation.


Mads Gamdrup (b. 1967, Denmark) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1997. Mads Gamdrup has been professor at the Department of Photography at Trondheim Academy of Art since 2006 – 2018. He started his career as a landscape photographer and quickly distinguished himself by technical perfection and an austere style. Gamdrup has since developed an abstract language through exploring how light and color are formed in different constellations. Gamdrup has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. He is represented in important museum collections throughout the Nordic region, including at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Kiasma in Helsinki and the National Museum in Oslo. Furthermore, Gamdrup’s work is included in a number of important public and private collections in the United States, including The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.
Gamdrup is also know from a number of public commissions such as Skejby Hospital's Intensive Therapy Section and the Niels Borh Institute at the University of Copenhagen.