ANDREW KAYSER
b. 1975, East London, RSA
Using oil paint as his primary medium and the suburban landscape as a departure point, Kayser’s paintings suggest a collision of inner and outer realities, an impression that meaning is fleeting and intimately personal. Focusing on themes of doubt, ambiguity, and contradiction the artist never allows himself to intercede on behalf of the viewer; all interpretations are welcome, necessary. In acknowledging that the world is not something to be known and understood, but rather to be seen and queried, the artist strives to create works that are poignant, melancholic, and beautiful.
Born in 1975 in East London, South Africa, Kayser graduated from the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Art), Den Haag, Netherlands in 2001 and went on to participate in several exhibitions in and around the Netherlands before returning to South Africa in 2005. After a lengthy struggle with alcoholism, Kayser regained sobriety, resuming his professional practice of art in 2014. In 2017, Kayser held his first solo exhibition, ‘At Home After Dark’ at Kalashnikovv Gallery in Johannesburg. The year 2020 marked a shift from his previous mixed media works and drawings to a more singular focus on oil painting. In 2023 this shift was consolidated with his fifth solo exhibition, ‘Fragments of Longer Stories’ at Graham Contemporary, Johannesburg. Kayser has participated in numerous group exhibitions and his work has been shown at a number of art fairs including Enter Art Fair, Copenhagen; Cologne Fine Art and Design; AKAA Art and Design Fair, Paris; 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London; Investec Cape Town Art Fair and Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair. His work is collected nationally and internationally.
“Psycho-geographical, Andrew Kayser’s paintings explore a lived habitat that is spatial, visceral, and gnawing. That habitat is suburbia, capitalism’s middle-class ideal, a place of comfort compromised at every turn by the struggle to maintain it. The phrase – ‘Keeping up with the Jones’s’ – is the archetypal index of this psychic and existential unease – the need to match up to or best one’s neighbour, or, more abstractly, maintain the values addictively and seductively paraded in life-style magazines, another opioid. In this regard, Kayser’s paintings and drawings function as reveals – they part the curtain and invite us to enter a quandary. As inductee and witness, we move about the paintings, study their nuanced drama, often taut, often suspended, caught in a rictus of unease.”
– Ashraf Jamal
Solo and Duo exhibitions:
2023 Fragments of Longer Stories, Graham Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa
2023 A Line Around Your Thoughts, duo show with Rhett Martyn, Gallery2, Johannesburg, South Africa
2021 Not Enough Time to Do Nothing, THK Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2019 A Moderate Bliss, THK Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2019 Christ Haus!!, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2019 Studio Show with Jake Michael Singer, August House, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Dark Dogs and Candy Floss, duo show with Manuela Karin Knaut, Graham’s Fine Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2017 At Home After Dark, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2016 No Lack of Void/The Gulag Rim, duo show Jason Bronkhorst, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Selected group exhibitions:
2024 The Allegory of Painting, Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa (anticipated)
2024 The Un-turning Wheel, Kalashnikovv Gallery in collaboration with Latitudes, Latitudes Centre for the Arts, Johannesburg, South Africa
2024 SEED III, SAFFCA, Villa Arcadia, Johannesburg, South Africa
2024 Winter Group Exhibition, Everard Read Franschhoek, Cape Town, South Africa
2024 Let the Story Begin, Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa
2023 25th Anniversary Exhibition, Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa
2023 Collide, Featherstone Center for the Arts, Martha’s Vineyard, MA, United States of America
2022 Africa Now, THK Gallery, Cologne, Germany
2022 TODO ES DE COLOR, The Curator’s Room, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2022 FEVER, Boschendal x Norval Art Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2021 TransForm, THK Gallery, Cologne, South Africa
2020 Cubicle Series January 2020, CIRCA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2018 The Cat Show, David Krut Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Kalashnikovvgallery 3.0, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2018 Memento Mori, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2017 The Invisible Exhibition, Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg, South Africa
2017 Another Antipodes/Urban Axis, PS Art Space, Perth, Australia
2017 UntitledBerlin, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2016 Super Salon, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2016 The Scramble for Africa, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2016 #ULTRACONTEMPORARY #EMERGENTART #AFRICA, Museum of African Design, Johannesburg, South Africa
2015 Cross-Sections, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2015 Transitions, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Old Transvaal Post Office, Johannesburg, South Africa
2015 Young Collectors, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Selected Art fairs:
2025 London Art Fair, presented by The Finch Project, London, United Kingdom (anticipated)
2022 Enter Art Fair, presented by THK Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
2021 Cologne Fine Art and Design, presented by THK Gallery, Cologne, Germany
2020 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, presented by THK Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2020 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, presented by THK Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2019 Cologne Fine Art and Design, presented by THK Gallery, Cologne, Germany
2019 Also Known As Africa (AKAA) Art and Design Fair, presented by THK Gallery, Paris, France
2019 FNB Joburg Art Fair, presented Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2019 Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair, presented by THK Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
2019 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, presented by Kalashnikovv Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2018 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, presented Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2017 FNB Joburg Art Fair, presented Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2017 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, presented Kalashnikovv Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2016 Berliner Liste Art Fair, presented Kalashnikovv Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2016 FNB Joburg Art Fair, presented Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2016 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, presented Kalashnikovv Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2015 FNB Joburg Art Fair, presented Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa