JOHS is pleased to present I Dwelled into a Thousand Sunsets, the first New York exhibition of Danish painter Mads Bryld. Bringing together a body of work that emerges from images Bryld has gathered over time, during morning runs in Copenhagen, from landscapes in Sweden, and from New York some years ago, the exhibition is rooted in places that, from a distance, feel like home. In this way, memory is built through his paintings as he proposes an alternative tempo, one that invites stillness, attention, and a deeper attunement to the world’s transitions. Within his practice, Bryld is drawn to spaces that feel unresolved or “messy,” yet function on their own terms. From this perspective, his works do not depict nature as a fixed image, but as something continuously becoming. They operate as windows, gazes outward that ultimately absorb the viewer.

In I Dwelled into a Thousand Sunsets, branches fracture and reassemble across the surface, dissolving distinctions between foreground and background. Conceived from this “messy” world that Bryld gravitates toward, the work develops from back to front. Light pools and disperses in tones of pale yellow, moss green, and bursts of turquoise, evoking both the density of foliage and the immateriality of atmosphere. The composition resists a sense of resolution; what we see is not a single moment, but many layered together. This sense of fragmentation extends into Shimmer, a fragment derived from the larger composition, where a more monochromatic palette of yellows, whites, pinks, and touches of orange evokes the first stroke of sunlight.

In this sense, in Catching Dawn, Bryld captures the fragile threshold where night gives way to morning, portraying dawn as a gradual emergence. Painted with a sense of immediacy, the forms in the image remain open, what appears as a flower might just as easily be a spark. Light seeps through dense, shifting vegetation, where deep greens and reds hold the residue of darkness while flickers of yellow and soft pink signal the arrival of day. A path quietly surfaces within the composition, less as a defined track than as a sensation of movement.

Across the exhibition, landscapes unfold gradually. Bryld does not paint defined settings; instead, seasons shift, boundaries dissolve, and transitions become fundamental. In works such as The Night Has Opened My Eyes, falling leaves draw the viewer into a scene that feels at once mystical and luminous. In contrast to his more spontaneous approach, this work was developed slowly, through pauses and returns. Elsewhere, reflections and layered spaces: ponds, shadows, and surrounding vegetation, merge into unstable environments where worlds converge into a shifting yet contained universe.


Light stretches, hesitates, and returns. Bryld captures what often escapes notice: the almost imperceptible change in temperature from one day to the next, the way sunlight gathers strength, and the quiet insistence of growth. In this way, Bryld’s work, grounded in sustained, almost hyperlocal observation, translates into compositions where structure remains in flux. His surfaces are constructed through layering and fragmentation, allowing figure and ground to continuously shift. Color operates relationally, accumulating and dispersing across the surface. Nature does not present itself as a spectacle, but as something close, surrounding, and continuous with us.

MADS BRYLD (1991)



Mads Bryld, born 1991, lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Recent exhibitions include; Altered Horizons, Haricot Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2025. Sometime in the Spring, Somewhere in the Fall, V1 SALON, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2025. Landscapes, V1 Gallery & Eighteen, Copenhagen, Denmark 2025. Fortune Teller, V1 SALON, Copenhagen, Denmark 2024. Catching Currents, Chasing Ducks, V1 SALON, Denmark 2024. Onions, group exhibition, OUTPOST, Copenhagen, Denmark 2023. Bookbar, Paris, France 2023. Psyche, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2022, and A Mon Avis Vol. IIII, group exhibition 2022.