ANDRZEJ URBANSKI
(b. 1983 Poznan, Poland)

Andrzej Urbanski is an established Cape Town-based artist prized for his immaculate hard-edged abstract art. The precise forms defining Urbanski’s practice belie its relationship to memory, sensory and spatial encounters, emotions and psychic states, which are channelled most often into overlapping colourful geometric shapes. Through the colour shards of his structural forms, Urbanski investigates how complexity can be held within order. Drawing on the recursive logic of fractals — forms that repeat and evolve across scale — his paintings become blueprints of dynamic structure. Through precision and intentional layering, Urbanski constructs visual systems where geometry and gesture converge. Each composition is a study in balance: not static, but alive with tension and movement. These works mirror the underlying architecture of nature and consciousness, where the fragment reflects the whole and pattern becomes a language of presence.

His art appears to be the result of an automated process — the precision of its execution engenders this notion that it is generated by a detached, robotic or digital tool. His interest in generating this illusion is rooted in his fascination with digitally produced art, the digital tools he uses in plotting his intricate compositions, the relationship between lived experience and virtual reality and the valorisation of handmade products in the post-industrial era. It is also informed by his appreciation for the minimalist movement, though he is inspired by a range of high modernists from Rothko to Mondrian.

He employs the unconventional spray paint medium in his abstract painting as it produces flat colour and removes any trace of the ‘artist’s hand’. This conforms not only to the minimalist ethos but his desire to replicate imagery that appears to be digitally generated.

Urbanski has participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world since graduating with a Masters in Fine Art from the ECAL University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2012. He was born in Poznan, Poland in 1983 and settled in Berlin, Germany, with his parents in 1989. Growing up in Berlin’s ‘grey zone’ after the fall of the wall in the late eighties when barriers between east and west were eroded activated his participation in street culture. He first experimented with spray-paint as a graffiti artist before applying this medium in a fi ne art context. After exhibiting in shows in his then-hometown of Berlin, Georgia USA, Canada and Switzerland, a Cape Town residency brought him to South African shores in 2012. He relocated to this country and enjoyed his first South African solo exhibition, Mindgame, in 2015 at Salon 91 in Cape Town.

It was a sell-out show and he has gone from strength to strength as an artist, producing larger more ambitious works and compositions. He is currently represented by Everard Read and to date has had solo exhibitions in their Johannesburg, Cape Town and London spaces.

“Urbanski is a rare breed of artist – one who authentically manages to playfully negotiate perfect applications and concrete designs with a focused ability that denotes fresh and pertinent abstract experimentation,” says Emma Vandermerwe, curator at Everard Read in Cape Town. “Urbanski has settled on a vocabulary and aesthetic that chimes with these times though its lines extend back in time,” wrote art commentator Mary Corrigall in the Cape Times (August 23, 2017).

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025

Continuum, Everard Read Johannesburg, South Africa

Fractal, ANN Gallery, Knokke, Belgium

2024

Disturbance, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

Fragmented, Macadam Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

2023

Monochromacy, Macadam Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

Intersected, Everard Read, London, UK

2022

Hedron, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2021

Irregular, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

Fragmented, Macadam gallery, Brussels, Belgium

2020

Digital Frequencies, Everard Read, London, UK

A04 3684/618/20, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2018

A03 2034/538/18, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

AB02 833/837/18, Everard Read, London, United Kingdom

2017

AB01 1703/62017, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2015

MINDGAME, Salon91, Cape Town, South Africa

2012

Chance Visitor, A Word of Art, Cape Town, South Africa


SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2026

ArtParis, with Everard Read, Paris, France

2025

EXPO CHICAGO, with Everard Read, Chicago, USA

10 Years | Summer Show, Everard Read, London, UK

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

FNB Art Joburg, with Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2024

RMB Latitudes Art Fair, with Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

Winter, Everard Read, London, UK

Milan Design Fair, with Macadam Gallery, Milan, Italy

Opening exhibition, ANN Gallery, Knokke, Belgium

2023

FNB Joburg Art Fair, with Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2022

Spring, group show, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

Summer, group show, Everard Read, London, UK

2021

Masterpiece, with Everard Read, London, UK

Investec Cape Town Art Fair (online), with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

In Conversation, group show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

ARTUP Fair, with Macadam Gallery, Lille, France

2020

STILL, group exhibition, Everard Read, UK & South Africa

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

Winter, group show, Macadam Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

2019

Southern Aspect, Everard Read, London, United Kingdom

Summer, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

CONTEXT Art Miami, with Everard Read, Miami, USA

2018

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read Cape Town, South Africa

Summer, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2017

FNB Joburg Art Fair, with Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

Summer Exhibition II, Everard Read, London, United Kingdom

HARDLINE, Everard Read, Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Southern Abstraction, Everard Read, London, United Kingdom

Winter Collection, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

Spectrum, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2016

FNB Joburg Art Fair solo booth with Salon91, Johannesburg South Africa

AKAA Art Fair, with Everard Read, Paris, France

Paths, two-man exhibition with Tahiti Pehrson at Salon91, Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract Show, group show, Everard Read & CIRCA Johannesburg, South Africa

Winter Collection, group show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Salon 91, South Africa

2015

Bronze, Steel and Stone, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

Turbine Art Fair, with Salon91, Johannesburg, South Africa

This is the Place, group exhibition, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

Golden Haze, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

2014

Turbine Art Fair, with Salon91, Johannesburg, South Africa

Paper is You, group show, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Salon 91, South Africa

2013

Cape Town Art Fair, with Salon91, Cape Town, South Africa

A Vacant Passage, works by Paul Senyol & Andrzej Urbanski, Salon91, Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract Stories, A Word of Art, Cape Town, South Africa

2012

Neo-Maso, Geneva, Switzerland

Art Base, Art Festival, Berlin, Germany

Living Walls, The City Speaks, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

The Swarm exhibition, Vancouver, Canada

One K Collection, Lovell Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

Retranchement, Manoir de Martigny, Switzerland

2011

Process No. 14, Sabine Grizmek, Andrzej Urbanski and Carina Jo Sivager, Prozessgalerie, Berlin, Germany

2009

Process No. 01, Prozessgalerie, Berlin, Germany