Fanie Buys

Fanie Buys (b. 1993) is a South African artist living in London. Primarily working with figurative techniques, Buys uses painting as a way to investigate how the human form is represented across different mediums—often highlighting outdated press releases and elegantly aging film stars. He approaches painting as a performance-like meditation, aiming to uncover hidden, sometimes humorous meanings. His work stands out for its cleverness and wit, combining intellectual depth and verbosity. Buys views his evolving art practice as a self-reflection on his identity as an artist, set against his own critical skepticism toward those who highlight this in their artist’s statements.

Fanie Buys (b. 1993) is a South African artist currently based in London. He was born in Gansbaai, but was shuffled through a fair range of schools in the Garden Route's socio-economic spectrum after which he attended the Michaelis School of Fine Art, graduating with a distinction in Studio work in 2016. He was a co-recipient of the Judy Steinberg Award for Painting and the Simon Gerson Award for an exceptional body of work and has been included in several group shows and has mounted several solo presentations, namely: Miss in 2021 and Happy Birthday Jesus! in 2019 (both at 99 Loop gallery in Cape Town). Buys works in a figurative style considering the role of traditional portraiture in contemporary society. Using found images, AI, and unconventional subject matter: Buys considers the act of painting as a performative meditation to realise hidden, often tongue-in-cheek, meaning. Erudite, verbose, but always witty, Buys’ work is a developing practice considering himself as an artist juxtaposed against a critical disdain of people who put that in their artist’s statements. Fanie Buys began collaborating with the David Krut Workshop in 2021 on watercolour monotypes. Buys had previously exhibited with David Krut Projects in the group exhibition The Cat Show in 2018.