21 july 2025, Flor Linckens
Luis Xertu: where plants reveal queer stories
On 26 July, the exhibition 'A Community Status for the Isolated' by Luis Xertu opens At TORCH Gallery in Amsterdam. This artist shows that a painting does not have to be a static object. For his large-scale works, often well over one and a half metres tall, he uses real plants that change colour over time. The partly organic nature of the works renders them alive and dynamic: sometimes it takes years for the transformation to be complete. Over time, the leaves literally turn from green to gold. That way, impermanence becomes a tangible process, a mirror of our own finite existence.
Xertu’s working method is technically intriguing: he photographs his models or works with old photographs, digitally determines the composition, paints his figures in acrylic, and then carefully affixes plants and leaves onto the canvas. In his most recent works, Xertu also incorporates personal garments. His visual language draws on mythology and the Pre-Raphaelites, but also engages with contemporary bodies and stories. Xertu’s visual vocabulary also has some roots in the performing arts: he works as a designer in that field and has explored theatre and dance within his own artistic practice.
On his canvases, various backgrounds unfold ranging from deep black to gold and sky blue. Here, male figures seem to float among branches and leaves. Sometimes draped in a simple garment, sometimes nude, yet always marked by a vulnerable, self-aware presence. The absence of depth creates a sense of infinity and timelessness, as if the characters are slowly sinking into the void.
The passing of time is reflected not only in the materials but also in the people he portrays. His most recent paintings are inspired by photo collections from the 1920s to the 1960s, images of gay men who met in secret at a time when their love was forbidden and dangerous. For many, that risk has not entirely disappeared. These works reveal the tension between community and solitude and reflect Xertu’s personal exploration of his own sexuality.
In the exhibition 'A Community Status for the Isolated', the artist focuses on queer experiences that rarely take centre stage. Not an exuberant celebration, but other nuances. Xertu paints a portrait of queer life that is not shaped by parades, but rather by memory, distance, and the quiet wish to belong. In this exhibition, he creates space for what often remains unspoken, for those who fall between the cracks, and for the beauty that can be found precisely there.
The exhibition coincides with both Pride Amsterdam and the Parade Theatre Festival and is officially part of both events. That way, Xertu’s work becomes part of a broader conversation about visibility and identity. His paintings highlight another, less prominent side of queer experience, where stillness, longing, and self-exploration take centre stage.
A special spoken word programme, curated by De Poezieboys for De Parade, adds another layer. Poets such as Anneke Brassinga, Jan Glas, and Yentl van Stokkum will perform works responding to the paintings, challenging familiar images of queerness. This creates a dialogue between image and language, between past and present.
Luis Xertu was born in 1985 in Mexico City but has lived in the Netherlands for over twenty years now. In 2009, he graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. His work was shown in the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. In 2019, he was nominated for the Royal Award for Modern Painting, where he received the Audience Award.
