Tiles of Lisboa by Alantherock: One Wall Made of Many

Tiles of Lisboa by Alantherock is a photography art print that gathers roughly sixty photographs of Azulejo tiles from across Lisbon into a single grid. No wall in the city looks like this. Alan Pedersen shot the tiles one at a time, street by street, and the print is what happened when he set them next to each other.

Tiles of Lisboa is a photography art print by Alan Pedersen, working as Alantherock. It assembles his own photographs of Azulejos, the glazed ceramic tiles that cover buildings across Lisbon, into one patchwork grid. Three editions are available, Day, Night and Dream, in three sizes, printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g eco.

A Wall That Does Not Exist Anywhere in Lisbon

The tiles in this print never shared a wall. Each panel in the grid is a separate photograph taken somewhere different in the city, and the print is the only place they sit together. Lisbon spreads its Azulejos across whole neighbourhoods, over facades, stairwells, shopfronts and church walls, at heights and angles that make it impossible to see more than a handful at once.

The joins are visible if you look for them. The scale changes from panel to panel, so one cell holds a single large tile while the cell beside it holds a field of small ones. The wear changes too. Some tiles are chipped, crazed or bleached pale by the sun, and the panel next to them looks as though it was glazed last year. None of that was tidied up. The grid keeps the damage, the mismatched grout and the awkward repair, because that is what the walls actually look like.

This is something only a camera can do. Azulejos are architecture. They are fixed to buildings and left outdoors, and nobody is going to take them down and rearrange them. Every tile here is real and was photographed on location. What has been assembled is the arrangement, not the tiles. A photograph lifts them off the wall without moving a single one.

The Grid Is Not Sorted, and That Is the Point

Nothing in the grid is arranged by colour, age or pattern family. A blue and white panel in the old Portuguese manner sits directly beside a yellow and blue geometric that looks like it was laid in the 1960s. A hand-painted floral runs straight into a flat checkerboard. The order looks like the order things were found in, which is a different kind of order from the one a designer would have imposed.

Along the top row, one panel is not a repeating pattern at all. It is a dark green tile carrying a gold ornament, and at its centre sits a small red heart. It is the only mark in the whole print that means something rather than decorates something, and it is easy to walk past on a first look. It survives every edition, turning cyan in Night and black in Dream, holding the same position throughout.

Choosing Between Day, Night and Dream

The three editions are the same grid in three treatments, with every tile holding its exact position. Day is the tiles as photographed, in full daylight colour, and it is the warmest and busiest of the three. Night shifts the whole palette into blues, golds and magentas. It reads as richer rather than darker, closer to how the tiles look under street lighting than to actual darkness. Dream removes the colour altogether and leaves black, white and grey.

Dream repays a second look. With the colour gone, what remains is the drawing on each tile, and the pattern-making becomes far easier to read. That edition came out of feedback from Alan's followers on Instagram. Choosing between the three is a decision about how loud you want the wall to be, rather than a decision about which picture you want.

The print is offered in three sizes, 30x40 cm, 50x70 cm and 70x100 cm, on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g eco. Every print carries the Alan Pedersen-Alantherock signature, and a tree is planted for each one sold.

This grid has appeared at NOKUKO once before, underneath something else. Prominent Peacock by Alantherock is drawn and painted on top of these exact tiles, panel for panel and red heart included, and the two prints entered the catalogue on the same day in August 2023. Tiles of Lisboa was first introduced here in September 2023, in the same announcement as the peacock.

Roughly sixty walls in one frame, and not one of them corrected.

Hang it where nothing else is competing, and give people time in front of it. Everyone ends up with a favourite tile.

About Tiles of Lisboa by Alantherock

What paper is Tiles of Lisboa printed on?
It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g eco. The print is dense with saturated colour from edge to edge, with no empty ground anywhere, so the paper has to hold dozens of competing blues, yellows and oranges without letting any of them go muddy.

What sizes does Tiles of Lisboa come in?
Three sizes, 30x40 cm, 50x70 cm and 70x100 cm. The full grid appears in all three, so the larger sizes mainly buy you the ability to read the detail on individual tiles from across a room. Frames shown in the photographs are for display only and are not included.

What is the difference between the Day, Night and Dream editions?
They are the same grid in three different treatments, and every tile stays in the same position in all three. Day shows the tiles in daylight colour as photographed. Night shifts the palette into blues, golds and magentas. Dream removes colour entirely and leaves the patterns in black, white and grey.

Is Tiles of Lisboa signed, and is it a limited edition?
Every print carries the signature of Alan Pedersen-Alantherock. It is not sold as a numbered limited edition, so no certificate of authenticity is issued with it. Day, Night and Dream are the only three versions made, and a tree is planted for every print sold.

Written by  NOKUKO.