ANDRZEJ URBANSKI
(b. 1983 in Poznan, Poland | Lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa)

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 fine 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
Intersected, Everard Read, London, Uk

2022
ANDRZEJ URBANSKI: Hedron, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa 

2020
ANDRZEJ URBANSKI: A04 3684/618/20, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Digital Frequencies, Everard Read, London, UK 

2018
ANDRZEJ URBANSKI:AB02 833/387/18, Everard Read, London, UK

2017
ANDRZEJ URBANSKI: AB01, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2026
ArtParis, with Everard Read, Paris, France

2025
EXPO CHICAGO, with Everard Read, Chicago, USA
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
10 Years | Summer 2025, Everard Read, London, UK
FNB Art Joburg, with Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2024
Latitudes Art Fair, with Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
Winter, Everard Read, London, UK

2023
FNB Joburg Art Fair, with Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
Summer, Everard Read, London, UK
Winter, Everard Read, London, UK

2022
Spring, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa 
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa 
Summer, Everard Read, London, UK

2021
Masterpiece, London Art Fair with Everard Read London
Investec Cape Town Art Fair (Online), with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
In Conversation, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa 

2020
A04 3684/618/20, group show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read / CIRCA Cape Town, South Africa

2019
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
CONTEXT Art Miami, with Everard Read, Miami, USA
SUMMER, Everard Read, London, UK
Southern Aspect - A Group Exhibition, Everard Read, London, UK 
Summer, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2018
Andrzej Urbanski - AB02 833/387/18, Everard Read Gallery, London, UK
A03 2034/538/18, CIRCA, Johannesburg, South Africa
A03 2034/538/18, CIRCA, Johannesburg, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read / CIRCA Cape Town, South Africa
Summer, Everard Read / CIRCA Cape Town, South Africa

2017
AB01 1200/550/17, CIRCA Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Summer exhibition, Everard Read Gallery, London, UK
Spectrum, Group exhibition, CIRCA Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Southern Abstraction, Everard Read Gallery, London, UK

2016 
HARDLINE, CIRCA Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
FNB Joburg Art Fair solo booth, Salon91, Selected Projects & Exhibitions, Johannesburg, South Africa
AKKA Art Fair, Everard Read/ CIRCA Booth, Paris, France
Paths, two-man exhibition with Tahiti Pehrson at Salon91, Cape Town, South Africa

2015 
Bronze, Steal and Stone, Circa & Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
This is the Place, Salon91, South Africa
Turbine Art Fair, Salon91, South Africa
MINDGAME, Salon91, South Africa
Cape Town Art Fair, Salon91, South Africa
Golden Haze, Salon91, South Africa

2014
Turbine Art Fair, Salon91, Johannesburg, South Africa
Paper is You II, Salon91, Cape Town, South Africa
Cape Town Art Fair, Salon91, South Africa

2013
Cape Town Art Fair, Salon91, Cape Town, South Africa
A Vacant Passage, Works by Paul Senyol & Andrzej Urbanski, Salon91, South Africa
Abstract Stories, /A Word of Art, Cape Town, South Africa

2012
Kalahari Catalyst Art Auction, Cape Town, South Africa
One K Collection, Lovell Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
Chance Visitor, A Word of Art, Cape Town, South Africa
Neo-Maso, Geneva, Switzerland
Art Base, Art Festival, Berlin, Germany
Retranchment-Manoir de Martigny, Switzerland
Living Walls, The City Speaks, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
The Swarm exhibition, Vancouver, Canada
Process No. 14, works by Sabine Grizmek, Andrzej Urbanski and Carina Jo Sivager, Prozessgallerie, Berlin, Germany
Process No. 01, Prozessgallerie, Berlin, Germany

2011
Process No. 14, Sabine Grizmek, Andrzej Urbanski and Carina Jo Sivager, Prozessgallerie, Berlin, Germany