Werner Bronkhorst, Walk On Water, 2025

Walk On Water confronts themes of faith, impossibility, and transcendence through its title reference while maintaining Bronkhorst's characteristically secular approach to spiritual metaphor. The composition presents a solitary figure traversing a fractured aquatic plane, creating powerful metaphorical resonance with contemporary experiences of isolation and uncertainty.

Here, the artist employs dramatic scale relationships to emphasise the sense of human vulnerability within vast expanse of nature—a theme that resonates particularly strongly in the context of the current climate crisis. Bronkhorst's textural treatment of the water surface creates tactile complexity that invites physical proximity while maintaining conceptual distance through the work's pristine presentation. The figure, painted with the artist's characteristic hyperrealist precision, appears to navigate not solid ground but a crystalline plane that suggests both ice and digital matrix.

This work represents Bronkhorst's most direct engagement with iconography, yet his approach remains resolutely contemporary. 'Walking on water' becomes less about divine intervention and more about human resilience in the face of impossible circumstances. The fractured surface beneath the figure suggests the instability of contemporary existence—environmental, social, and technological—where traditional certainties have dissolved into precarious navigation.

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Werner Bronkhorst

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