South African painter Werner Bronkhorst has announced “HIGH,” his largest exhibition to date, opening October 2–4 at the Atrium Tower on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz in Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz.The show marks his European debut and will present more than 40 new paintings inspired by the energy and open possibility of the sky.
Bronkhorst is known for his painting technique in which thick, heavily applied layers of paint are built up to create richly three-dimensional backgrounds. He then paints in hyper-realistic miniature figures and objects with exacting detail.
The resulting works, which are part abstract expressionism, part trompe l’oeil, invite viewers to imagine themselves as tiny people inside a vast, textured world, inspired, he says, byAndy Warhol, Willem De Kooning, Keith Haring and René Magritte. Bronkhorst organizes his output into a series of thematically linked collections that contain hidden cheeky references to the slogan of “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll.”
Country Road, 2026
Werner Bronkhorst
FairArt
For instance, “White Lines” explored snow and winter; “Forbidden Grass” centred on sports and park life; “Wet” turned to water. A separate body of charcoal drawings of speeding cars reflects a parallel fascination with movement and black-and-white photography, and includes an ongoing series devoted to the Porsche 911.
“HIGH” moves the focus skyward, with planes crossing distant horizons, hot-air balloons adrift in cloud, and skydivers suspended in open air. The centrepiece is Come Up For Air (2026), a human-size canvas populated by 25 individually detailed hot-air balloons floating across a sunset.
Bronkhorst, who has almost 2 million followers on Instagram, has built his fanbase almost entirely through social media, where he shares his process in real time. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, he moved to Sydney in 2020, initially working as a bespoke furniture designer. Though he sells his artwork primarily through timed drops, original artworks by Bronkhorst have sold for over six-figure sums at auction. In December, he set an auction benchmark of $460,000 at FairArt online auctions for Tiebreak! (2025) with his international auction house debut earlier this year at Phillips. This year, exhibitions of his work have been displayed at Clifton Gallery and WEART.
