With sold-out collections, exhibitions in London and New York, collaborations with 2025 F1 World champion Lando Norris and cult golf brand Malbon, Werner Bronkhorst has become one of the most talked- about young artists in the contemporary scene. Now, the South African-born, Sydney- based artist brings his most ambitious project yet to Dubai for its world premiere. CRACK, a four-room gallery exhibition debuting at Concrete, Alserkal Avenue from 16–18 January 2026, unfolds across clay courts, salt flats, deserts and dreamscapes, each canvas charged with motion, memory and Bronkhorst’s signature sculptural texture. With more than 2.4 million social media followers captivated by his process and storytelling, Bronkhorst’s decision to launch CRACK in Dubai reflects both the city’s dynamism and his own expanding global reach.
CRACK began with Bronkhorst’s fascination with what happens to landscapes under pressure: how they split, absorb, mark, or hold memory. A “crack” can be a sound, a break, a sign of tension or a moment of release and for Bronkhorst, it became a starting point for exploring places shaped by heat, force, sport and habit. The exhibition unfolds across four atmospheric rooms, each gathering works around a different kind of terrain. Visitors move from salt lakes and beaches, into desert expanses and clay and hard courts experiencing works that capture impact, rhythm and childhood play. What unites all four rooms is Bronkhorst’s warm, muted palette and his ability to turn a single colour field into an entire world.
“CRACK started with me staring at the ground. Clay courts, dunes, salt pools, boxing rings, places that crack and shift but still hold us. I wanted to build little worlds on top of them. Tiny figures, big feelings, quiet jokes, people going through it or just lying in the sun. It’s a collection about tension and softness, breaking and holding and how much story can fit inside one brushstroke,” says Bronkhorst.
Across the exhibition, CRACK moves between personal memory, sport culture, wordplay, humour and atmosphere. Some works draw from family road trips, music and the rituals of travel. Others revisit Bronkhorst’s upbringing in South Africa, long afternoons on athletics tracks, improvised football games in dusty fields, or how a landscape can feel both harsh and comforting at the same time. Many of the works zoom out into wide horizons where human presence is small against the land; others are close-up stages for frozen motion or quiet interaction. The result is a collection that feels both cinematic and intimate, carrying the rhythms, heat and subtle details of everyday life.
The collection’s hero works set the visual and emotional tone of CRACK.
- Let’s Clay, the first painting in the series, established the entire palette after countless attempts to achieve the perfect clay-coloured surface inspired by Roland Garros.
- Yeehaw channels the energy and attitude of a cowboy whip cracking through the air, transforming motion into a confident, playful composition.
- In Caravan Life, an intense orange desert becomes a quiet cinematic expanse, where a caravan of camels moves across seemingly endless dunes.
- Country Road distills the many associations of its title into a warm, open crossing that feels both simple and evocative.
- Horseplay freezes the elegant movement of dressage horses across a calming colour field, each tiny rider painted with painstaking detail.
- Ballin’ reimagines a wooden basketball court with marbled textures and a circular formation of miniature players inspired by vintage games.
- The Pilgrimage stands as Bronkhorst’s most significant work to date: an intimate yet expansive journey following a family moving through an unending series of deep red and burgundy dunes, a solemn, powerful reflection on personal and collective passage.
Beyond the anchor pieces, CRACK unfolds through works that are playful, nostalgic and atmospheric. Pink Pony Club recalls family road trips, while All For Love and Three Shades of Grey explore the character of clay and hard courts. Bath Salt, Heat Wave and Sandy Road capture sun soaked, textural moments, and pieces like Sprint, Cops and Robbers and Play Rough draw from Bronkhorst’s childhood in South Africa. Wordplay appears in Hot Spot and Rough Man’s Porsche, while long-format works: Going Through It, Mind the Gap, Long Island and Hotline, compress movement into vertical frames. Additional works include Lines in the Sand, Hot Wheels, Mirage and The Alchemist.
Across more than thirty works, CRACK reveals Bronkhorst’s ability to turn simple terrains into charged emotional spaces. Each canvas pulls the viewer into its own rhythm, sometimes energetic, sometimes contemplative but always rooted in the artist’s fascination with how people move through the world. Together, the works signal a defining moment in Bronkhorst’s practice, marking his most ambitious and interconnected series to date.
CRACK will be presented at Concrete, Alserkal Avenue from 16–18 January 2026. Following the exhibition, selected artworks will be available for purchase exclusively on the artist’s website from 18 January onward.
Text from press release
Image: Werner Bronkhorst. Horseplay. Detail. Acrylic polymer on Canvas. 102 x 102. cm. Image courtesy of the artist
