Mads Hilbert

Jordkammerater

V1 Gallery is pleased to present

Jordkammerater
A solo exhibition by Mads Hilbert
V1 Gallery | January 23 – March 7, 2026

Opening reception: Friday, January 23, 16:00 – 21:00 

Please contact mail@v1gallery.com if you wish to receive the artwork lists once available.

I know of nothing better than trees and flowers, our immobile dirt comrades on earth. We are all children of the earth and are very fond of sunshine
— H.A. Brendekilde in a letter to a gardener in Svendborg, Denmark

Winter seeds are scattered across fields and safe oases of fern. The sunlight is a pink dream that allows free desire. The dirt becomes an intimate cave where comrades lie beneath the surface, in the mulch, and cuddle. Ploughings provide seedbeds.  

In Mads Hilbert's exhibition Jordkammerater (Dirt Comrades), small declarations of love and buried, desirous male bodies float together with Danish art historical references—back to a period when the lonely farmer was a worn-out figure; in Jordkammerater, he is cruising the fields looking for loving company. 

In large paintings, with alternating dense motifs and bare canvas, Mads works with the balance between the incomplete and the finished. The oil paint is applied intuitively, gradually weaving horizontal and vertical strokes together to form meaning. The details emerge like single, delicate straws, green sprouts and small coloured specks, imitating the grains that the farmer scatters on the field in the iconic sower motifs of artists H.A. Brendekilde and L.A. Ring. Historical comrades and imaginative boyfriends.

An archaeological excavation is in progress. Between layers of paint, remnants of words and matter are found – old, forgotten terms that Mads forges together. One example is Urning (Uranian), a trace of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs' groundbreaking concept from 1864. Urninge insisted on a physical and spiritual love between men, a loving camaraderie. Mads' Urning appears as a solitary, back-turned figure surrounded by still water.

The excavation continues. Body parts emerge from dark brown and purple backgrounds, as if growing out of the soil: a torso, a bare neck, one, two recognisable friends' faces with red cheeks.

In addition to human friends, there are also those who fall outside this category, as mentioned by Brendekilde. The swan is a friend, a symbolic and rousing one, which gathers in flocks after shaking off its feathers. In the painting Oldenår (Mast Year) – a term describing an abundant year for the fruit of oak and beech trees – this friendship becomes particularly evident. Here, a stream of white, bulging shapes push forward in the picture plane and fill the lower part of the frame. Black and yellowish-red brushstrokes hint at swan beaks, while grey shadows create layers upon layers of plumage that flow together. The red beaks suggest something morbid, which in the studies of severed man limbs and swan necks, evolves into a violent, legendary shapeshifting between man and swan. Painful traces that exist side by side with friendship.

It can be wonderful to be in the dirt and excavate the layers, so loving companions can come to the surface. Plough and let the green turn downwards for a while. 

— Text by Nynne Ryhl Olsson, friend of Mads

Mads Hilbert (b.1993, Helsinge, Denmark), lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the Funen Art Academy, Denmark.   

His practice revolves around existence and the interconnected relationship between human beings and the surrounding world. How we transform the landscape, and how it transforms us. Inner and outer horizons, somewhere between the known and the unknown. His work embraces the incomplete, the tense transition between sketch and finished work. In this threshold there is a special openness where intuition, spontaneity and empathy can find space. 

Recent exhibitions include: Funen Art Academy, Odense, Denmark, 2025; Kadeau, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2025; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark 2024; OUTPOST gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2023; Pt2 Gallery, Oakland, USA, 2023; OUTPOST, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2022.