Upcoming Exhibition

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Luis Xertu: Halfway Across the Rubicon

_{19 September - 21 November 2026}

PODIUM is proud to present ‘Halfway Across the Rubicon’, Rotterdam-based artist Luis Xertu’s first solo presentation with the gallery and in Asia. In this new body of paintings, Xertu unfolds a tender, sun-drenched world where the fleetingness of love, beauty, and youth lingers like the last light of summer. He traces delicate passages of intimacy within and beyond friendship, attending to a bittersweet ambivalence shaped by quiet tensions, hidden desires, and unspoken affections that surface as both excess and residue through the fissures of the grammar of social life.

The exhibition opens on 19 September (Sat), from 2 to 7 PM, and remains on view through 21 November (Sat).

Artist
Luis Xertu

PREVIEW REQUEST

Rooted in the same sensibility of time’s quiet passing, Xertu’s practice extends this meditation through his distinctive use of organic matter and process. He incorporates dried flora and foliage—materials that gradually shift from verdant green to autumnal tones—allowing each work to unfold like a slowed cinematic sequence. These evocative scenes are encapsulated beneath a translucent layer of gel that at times form gentle ripples around figures submerged in water, at others create subtle spatial depth that draws the eye inward. Throughout his oeuvre, Xertu returns to recurring backdrops reminiscent of the theatrical black box, imbuing each composition with a sense of performative stillness and poetic suspension. Here, however, this gravitas is tempered by a palette of cream, violet, and rose, lending the works a newfound lightness and intricacy of touch. Xertu also recently explores the dialogue between movement and stillness through a balance of silkscreen precision and painterly intuition—printing liquid ink on damp canvas in successive variations until one surface attains its rhythm, a texture hovering between appearance and disappearance, like memory itself dissolving beneath water’s skin.

The exhibition title draws on the small river in north-eastern Italy that once marked a decisive boundary in the late Roman Republic, and reimagines it as a threshold suspended between becoming and arrival. It conjures the fragile interval in which intimacy has already set itself in motion, yet has not fully revealed its shape—a moment when feeling gathers quietly, lingering at the edge of expression. At the same time, it suggests an emotional point of no return: once desire, attachment, or tenderness have crossed so far, there is no simple way back to the state before they emerged. The title thus holds tension and surrender in the same breath, reflecting Xertu’s interest in those charged passages where love moves from the barely perceived to the irrevocably felt.

Press Release

Exhibition Preview
Luis Xertu, Conversation in Purple (detail). Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift. Acrylic and organic materials on canvas, 105 x 150 cm | 41.3 x 59.1 in.
Courtesy of the artist and PODIUM, Hong Kong.
Luis Xertu, Camouflage (detail). Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift. Acrylic and organic materials on canvas, 65 x 85 cm | 25.6 x 33.5 in.
Courtesy of the artist and PODIUM, Hong Kong.

Luis Xertu, The Waves (detail). Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift. Acrylic and organic materials on canvas, 105 x 150 cm | 41.3 x 59.1 in.
Courtesy of the artist and PODIUM, Hong Kong.

Works

Luis Xertu
The Waves
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
105 x 150 cm | 41.3 x 59.1 in

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Luis Xertu
Sun Coming Down
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
105 x 150 cm | 41.3 x 59.1 in

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Luis Xertu
Conversation in Purple
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
105 x 150 cm | 41.3 x 59.1 in

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Luis Xertu
Conversation in Green
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
105 x 150 cm | 41.3 x 59.1 in

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Luis Xertu
Gypsophila
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
105 x 150 cm | 41.3 x 59.1 in

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Luis Xertu
Conversation in Pink
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
105 x 150 cm | 41.3 x 59.1 in

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Luis Xertu
Camouflage
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
65 x 85 cm | 25.6 x 33.5 in

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Luis Xertu
Held Nothing Against Him
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
60 x 75 cm | 23.6 x 29.5 in

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Luis Xertu
Treading Water
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
65 x 150 cm | 25.6 x 59.1 in

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Luis Xertu
Of Little Light
Material transformation initiated 2026; ongoing natural chromatic shift
Acrylic and organic materials on canvas
55 x 80 cm | 21.7 x 31.5 in

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Luis Xertu
Fahrenheit
2026
Acrylic on canvas
45 x 35 cm | 17.7 x 13.8 in

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Artist

Luis Xertu

PODIUM

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