Stanislaw Trzebinski

Trzebinski works primarily in bronze, creating sculpture and collectible design steeped in his fascination with organic life – from the cellular unfolding of biological systems, to the vibrant profusion of ecological forms on Earth.

Born in Mombasa, Kenya in 1992, Trzebinski spent his childhood exploring the wilderness of the Rift Valley and the tropical marine life of the East African coast. This immersion in nature, coupled with the untimely loss of his father at a young age, inform the dialectical tension of rupture and return at the heart of this practice.

Trzebinski moved to Cape Town in 2012 to apprentice in sculpture and bronze casting at Bronze Age Foundry under the guidance of sculptor Otto du Plessis. Largely self-taught, he creates on a prolific scale and embraces new processes and materials. He melds digital fabrication with the traditional technique of lost-wax casting and experiments widely with patinas inspired by the mineral and coastal landscapes of his childhood in Kenya.

He has shown his work widely in South Africa, including two solo exhibitions with Southern Guild. In the Absence of Light (2019) evoked a mystical encounter with the oceanic depths and included a forest of monumental stalactite-like sculptures and suspended “sea heart” pendants. Working with illumination for the first time, Trzebinski embedded small LEDs into many of the works to create the effect of bioluminescence. The body of work developed out of the artist’s 2018 series of sculptural bronze Extra Terrestrial tables, emblazoned with Turing patterns and sprouting tendrils of life that appeared both ancient and alive.

In his 2022 solo exhibition, Solastalgia, he imagines a post-Anthropocene world rebuilding itself in the aftermath of environmental collapse. This group of functional sculpture and wall-based works conjures primordial organisms, mutant flora and giant carnivorous mushrooms sheathed in fungal, porous skirts. Their otherworldly forms tell the disquieting story of a post-human landscape, ravaged but resilient, reconstructing itself out of biological necessity.

Trzebinski’s most recent work, which debuted in the Solo Section of the 2025 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, is a conceptual and formal development of this dystopian direction. As with the works in Solastalgia, many of the illuminated sculptures feature handblown glass forms in luminous hues, made in collaboration with specialist glass-blowers Kitengela Glass in his native Kenya. The series includes one of his most technically ambitious pieces to date, Refuge in the Ruins, a throne-like bronze sculpture incorporating lighting components and standing at two and a half metres tall.

Southern Guild has presented his work at Christie’s First Open Auction in London and at fairs including Expo Chicago, Design Miami, PAD London and The Aspen Art Fair.