Duo show | Max Blotas & Glen Pudvine
Fair
29.08.2026 — 30.08.2026
Art-O-Rama
Opening
28.08.2026
Art-O-Rama marks the first collaboration between DS Galerie (Paris) and Xxijra Hii (London). Conceived specifically for the fair, this presentation brings together works by Max Blotas and Glen Pudvine, whose practices converge around a shared inquiry into contemporary forms of sociability, exploring the relationships between constructed spaces, systems of representation, and the presence of the body.
Max Blotas’s installations function as stage devices: temples, offices, or nightlife spaces appear as mechanized models, activated and filmed live. These worlds, which initially seem immersive, gradually reveal their artificiality. With “Le Dauphin / Private Eyes” (2026), he reconstructs the scene of an underground nightclub in a robotic form. Hidden behind ventilation grilles, this miniature architecture (built at a 1:20 scale) is visible only through a video surveillance system broadcasting a live feed of the model’s interior. The space then takes on the characteristics of a spectral place: a lingering but bodiless celebration, where collective energy remains as a trace: a mechanical memory of the party.
Faced with this collective space emptied of its substance, Glen Pudvine’s paintings reintroduce the body as a site of intensity and vulnerability. Drawing on both classical painting and contemporary conceptions of the self, his nude figures appear in situations of radical exposure, blending personal anxieties, humor and grotesque imagery. Their presence oscillates between an existential dimension and a deliberately offbeat register, where the body becomes simultaneously a mythological subject and an absurd figure: an object of contemplation, projection and staging. In “Turkish Get Up in Caravaggio” (2025), the artist depicts himself, naked and almost life-size, in an image whose frontality directly confronts the viewer with his presence.
The encounter between these two practices creates a tension between a collective space that has become mechanical and a body that has once again become profoundly singular. In Max Blotas’s work, sociability appears as a mechanical trace. In Glen Pudvine’s, the body becomes the stage for an individual ritual, somewhere between introspection, exhibition and performance. Between decor and presence, their works reinterpret certain fictions of our present.
Working at the intersection of engineering, archaeology and fiction, Max Blotas creates installations in which sculptures, machines and automated systems form autonomous ecosystems. By repurposing the tools of science and technology, he constructs miniature worlds where light, fluids and mechanisms become vehicles for speculative narratives, bridging memory, myth and contemporary imagination. A graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art in London and the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Blotas was awarded the Prix Jeune Création in 2022. His work has been exhibited internationally, including in Yerevan, Liège, Paris, London, Venice and Thessaloniki. Plus d’infos
Glen Pudvine explores questions of identity, belief and vulnerability in contemporary society. Drawing equally from popular culture and medieval and Renaissance iconography, his works feature ambiguous figures in which the intimate meets the symbolic. Through painting, as well as video, performance and installation, he investigates the forms of spirituality, self-representation and community that emerge in the digital age. A graduate of the Royal Academy Schools, Pudvine has exhibited extensively throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. Plus d’infos
“SHY-RAH-HI ”
Founded in 2020 in Deptford, South London, Xxijra Hii emerged at a moment that called for new ways of exhibiting and experiencing art. Initially conceived as an experimental project, the gallery developed through digital formats and remote encounters, which enabled it to refine its programme and rethink the relationships it cultivates with its communities, both online and in physical space. Since 2023, Xxijra Hii has operated as an independent commercial gallery.
The gallery champions artists whose practices exist at the margins of convention, exploring unusual mediums, new creative processes, collaborative forms and alternative approaches to theory and allegory. Xxijra Hii is particularly interested in works that challenge our certainties and encourage us to question what we know—or think we know.
Committed to a thoughtful and sensitive approach, the gallery supports artistic practices capable of addressing complex subjects with humility and nuance. This balance between critical inquiry and human experience lies at the heart of its identity.
Today, Xxijra Hii works with a growing number of artists and is especially committed to supporting emerging practitioners, as well as those returning to their practice after periods of transition and development. Its programme is rooted in knowledge-sharing, collective research and the collaborative production of new ideas.
The gallery currently represents Yuli Serfaty, Glen Pudvine, Chris Thompson, Hannah Morgan and David Micheaud, whose practices are united by a shared interest in experimentation and emerging forms of contemporary artistic production. More info