Colombia-born, Sweden-based artist Hank Grüner presents High Hopes and Lies at the Selfridges Art Block, transforming the site into a ritualised environment where architecture becomes cosmology and speculative myth unfolds. Commissioned by Selfridges, the installation will be on view from January to October 2026.
Grüner’s practice is rooted in the ancestral DNA of Latin America, transmitted through what he describes as invisible threads of gesture and story — inherited through blood rather than geography. Adopted at an early age and raised in Sweden, Grüner works from an in-between position that allows him to construct his own mythologies. His imagined figures form an extended family shaped by memory, distance and invention, realised through raw, tactile materials including wood, clay, plaster, resin and canvas. Bold colour and texture draw equally from ancestral artefacts and contemporary anime.
Responding to Selfridges’ theme of originality, Grüner reflects on a cultural moment in which this once-central value is increasingly displaced by algorithms, audience metrics and performance data. High Hopes and Lies asks what it means to search for what is true rather than what is trending, at a time when culture risks endlessly reproducing itself. The commission marks the tenth artwork in the Art Block series, following projects by artists including Rory Mullen, William Cobbing, Mel Brimfield, Gray Wielebinski, Holly Hendry and Matthew Darbyshire.
Treating the Art Block as a theatrical stage, Grüner has created a self-contained ritual world anchored by three monumental sculptures, each standing over two metres tall. Constructed from plaster and resin with collage elements, Cactacuha occupies the central plinth, flanked by Hulhacta and Agagua in the vitrines to either side. At the feet of each figure sit sand altars bearing resin offerings of maize, shells and birds.
The figures merge human, ancient and otherworldly forms, each playing a distinct role within Grüner’s evolving mythology. Cactacuha acts as the gravitational centre — a conflicted leader positioned between collapse and regeneration. Hulhacta embodies the trickster, embracing chaos as a necessary force for transformation, while Agagua channels optimism, renewal and the joyful potential of change.
Together, the trio forms a living mythos — a sculptural ecosystem in which ritual, power and transformation converge. Situated just inside Selfridges’ Duke Street entrance, the Art Block’s marble-and-steel structure places large-scale contemporary art directly within the flow of everyday public life.
About
The Art Block is Selfridges’ permanent space for participatory and unexpected contemporary art. A marble-and-steel monolith located just inside the Duke Street entrance, the platform hosts an annual art commission. Flanked by two glass vitrines on either side of bronze-framed doors, the space forms a triptych designed to showcase large-scale artworks weighing up to 3.5 tonnes and standing over four metres tall.
Selfridges has maintained a longstanding commitment to the arts since opening its first store in 1909, inaugurated with the most creative window scheme London had ever seen: an homage to works by French Rococo painters Antoine Fragonard and Jean-Honoré Watteau. Over the past 15 years, Selfridges has expanded its patronage of the arts with a particular focus on emerging artists and continues to support the creative communities in the cities its stores call home: London, Birmingham and Manchester. Selfridges has ongoing relationships with institutions and organisations including IKON, The Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Frieze, The Whitworth, Manchester International Festival and Bold Tendencies. It has commissioned or exhibited work by artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Fernando Botero, Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Spencer Tunick, Banksy, Brian Eno, Conrad Shawcross, David LaChapelle, Joana Vasconcelos, Matthew Darbyshire, Yinka Ilori, Jonathan Scofield, Osman Yousefzada and Sharon Eyal, among many others.
