Bath Salt opens with the immediate sensation of immersion. A soft, dreamlike expanse of rose-blush and dusty pink that evokes the otherworldly hues of a salt farm landscape seen from altitude. The surface carries an almost meditative warmth, its layered ground building gentle undulations of tone and texture that, from a distance, read as the mineral-rich surface of a naturally pink pool. Tiny hyperrealist figures depicting bathers and leisure-seekers, rendered with exacting fine-detail brushwork, float and recline within this colourful expanse, their scale dwarfed by the vast abstract field they inhabit.

This is Werner Bronkhorst’s signature technique: a sculptural acrylic ground built through successive layers of paint and gel medium, achieving a three-dimensional surface quality before hyperrealist miniature figures are introduced with painterly precision bordering on the illusionistic. The work belongs to Bronkhorst’s CRACK collection, a body of contemporary art that draws its conceptual thread from the artist’s ongoing philosophical inquiry into scale as metaphor — in his own words, “If we look at the world from above, all of us are miniatures.” Bath Salt translates this premise into an image of leisure and bodily ease, yet the radical disproportion of figure to field invites a more searching question: how much of what we call relaxation is simply the act of surrendering to forces far larger than ourselves?

The print edition, produced in 2026 as a limited edition with archival inks on canvas, hand-stretched over a wood float-frame, preserves the warmth and textural nuance of the original with exceptional fidelity.

Collectors wishing to acquire this work by Werner Bronkhorst can do so through Dellasposa Gallery, London.