Xavier Hufkens

“I focus on native ‘writing’ and ‘non-writing’ systems of my Andean universe, to bring their creative potential back into the world, addressing the untreated grief of colonisation.” — Cecilia Vicuña. Arch Future (archaic future) marks the debut exhibition of Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña with the gallery. Spanning over sixty years, the show brings together every element of her expansive interdisciplinary practice, including three site-specific installations — two monumental quipus and a room-size precario installation alongside drawings, paintings, poetry, archival materials, sound, and film. Included are some of what the artist refers to as “Lost Paintings,” recent recreations of paintings from the 1960s and 70s that were lost or destroyed following the Chilean military coup. The exhibition also marks the European premiere of her recent film poem, Death of the Pollinators (2021). The title Arch Future reflects Vicuña’s sustained engagement with indigenous knowledge systems and local ecosystems as visionary, alternative forms of architecture — tools for imagining a more sustainable and just future.

Charline von Heyl’s first exhibition at Xavier Hufkens presents a dynamic suite of new paintings, works on paper, and lithographs that pulse with invention, wit, and formal tension. Long regarded as a vital force in contemporary painting, von Heyl conjures a visual universe that is as expansive as it is unpredictable. What emerges is a protean body of work: restless, confident, mercurial, and alive with inquiry and mischief. Born in Germany and coming of age in Cologne and Düsseldorf during painting’s revival in the 1980s, von Heyl diverged from the prevailing paths of many of her contemporaries. Eschewing irony and cool detachment, she forged a visual language rooted in buoyancy, risk, and a fierce independence of thought. Her paintings do not follow preordained themes; instead, they arise from an embodied process of looking, reading, and lived experience. A quiet thesis of the exhibition is captured in The Open, a painting whose title nods to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Eighth Duino Elegy. Von Heyl’s own translation of its opening line — 'With all eyes the creature sees into the open' — invokes a meditation on the divide between human and animal consciousness. For Rilke, 'the open' is the animal’s pure, unselfconscious perception, unclouded by the foreknowledge of death. The human gaze, by contrast, turns inward, burdened by self-awareness and retrospection. Von Heyl channels this metaphysical tension not overtly, but through perceptual states that hover between sensation and cognition. Improvisational and elusive, von Heyl’s work is charged by the tension between lyricism and its undoing. Patterns and

The gallery’s fifth exhibition devoted to American painter Alice Neel (1900 – 1984) focuses on the New York locations she frequented and interior views of her apartment, where she also worked in lieu of having a studio. Although celebrated for her paintings of people, her practice was much broader. Still Lifes and Street Scenes, which spans the period 1928 to 1981, is akin to a visual journal or chronicle. The works not only capture the places where Neel lived but also, at times, reflect her inner emotional world.

Xavier Hufkens is pleased to present Dame Magdalene Odundo’s first exhibition at the gallery, featuring a body of ceramic vessels alongside her monumental glass installation Transition II (2014). The exhibition highlights Odundo’s nearly five-decade engagement with the vessel as both form and metaphor. Her hand-built ceramics draw from a wide array of global traditions and the human body itself, which she views as a vessel in its own right. Crafted through a slow, physical process of coiling, burnishing and controlled firing, each unglazed piece retains a quiet porosity, allowing it to 'breathe' with life. In contrast, Transition II, composed of 1001 suspended, mouth-blown glass vessels, embodies the collaborative nature of glassblowing and extends Odundo’s exploration of archetypal form, drawing inspiration from ancient Egyptian artefacts and interweaving historical, material and cross-cultural narratives.