The Extended Moment

Chicago, IL — Hilton Contemporary is pleased to present The Extended Moment, an exhibition by Danish photographer Jacob Gils, opening Friday, June 26, 2026 at Hilton Contemporary’s River North location. This marks the artist’s debut exhibition in Chicago.

The Extended Moment reflects Gils’s ongoing exploration of time as a fluid and layered experience. Traditional photography is often associated with the decisive moment: a fraction of a second preserved forever. Gils expands this notion by constructing images from multiple exposures and accumulated movements, transforming a single photograph into a record of duration. His works invite viewers to experience time not as a fixed instant, but as something unfolding, where memory, perception, and motion coexist within the same frame.

The resulting images occupy a space between photography and painting, capturing not merely what was seen, but how it was experienced. Featuring works drawn from the artist’s celebrated “Movement” series, the exhibition includes luminous depictions of architecture — cathedrals and bridges — alongside landscapes and trees whose color and form read more like paintings than photographs.

Gils first gained recognition with his Limit to Your Love series, which debuted at the Copenhagen Photo Festival in 2011 and involved transferring Polaroid images onto watercolor paper. The Extended Moment brings these early, intimate works into dialogue with the expansive Movement photographs, tracing the through-line of an artist devoted to the texture of time.

The Extended Moment will be on view at Hilton Contemporary June 26 – September 15, 2026. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 26 from 5–8:00 pm.

About the Artist

Born in Copenhagen, Jacob Gils worked for many years as a commercial photographer before turning his focus to fine art. His first fine art series, Limit to Your Love, debuted at the Copenhagen Photo Festival in 2011. These early works involved transferring Polaroid images onto watercolor paper, creating richly textured surfaces that retained the immediacy and vulnerability of the original photograph.

Following the success of Limit to Your Love, Gils began developing his Movement series. “Movement was developed out of an interest in pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium,” says Gils. “Each piece consists of many fleeting moments layered into one image, creating a painterly finesse that conveys a feeling of time and space through multiple exposures.” Drawing inspiration from nature and memory, Gils creates works that echo Impressionist painting while maintaining the detail and precision of contemporary photography.

Through this innovative approach, Gils explores the technical and conceptual limits of photography, expanding the medium beyond the single captured instant. His work has earned international recognition and numerous accolades, including the prestigious Prix de la Photographie Paris. In 2024, he was awarded the largest-ever financial prize in art fair history — $100,000 — by the Erarta Foundation at the ZonaMaco Art Fair in Mexico, chosen by the fair’s attendees rather than a jury of art professionals.

Gils’ work is featured in prominent institutions, including The National Museum of Photography in Oslo, The National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen, Fotografiska in Stockholm, the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, Nanjing Museum of Visual Arts in China, and The Danish Cultural Center in Beijing.