Chris Soal (b. 1994), South Africa, has garnered international recognition for his innovative engagement with materiality, perception, and place. His works seek to make a poetic statement through the simplest of means, engaging the viewer’s spatial awareness and perceptual habits while challenging core societal preconceptions of value and hierarchy. In addition to the material aspect of his work Soal works with objects and materials in ways that show a conceptual engagement with their contexts and histories.

Through his use of toothpicks and bottle caps, along with concrete, rebar, electric fencing cable, sandpaper, and other discarded industrial materials and ephemera.  Soal’s works can be considered as a social abstraction, deeply rooted in and reflective of his upbringing in Johannesburg, South Africa. Working symbiotically with his materials, Soal utilises the inherent physical characteristics of the objects to transform them through processes of aggregation, combination, and erosion—seeking to foreground pressing ecological concerns. Despite the manufactured nature of his materials, his process allows them to take on biomorphic qualities that evoke natural phenomena.

Soal graduated with a BFA (Hons) from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2017.

Selected solo exhibitions include MAXXI, Rome (2025); WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town (2024, 2021); Piero Atchugarry Gallery, Miami (2023); and Eduardo Secci Gallery, Milan (2022). Art fair presentations include Art Brussels; The Armoury Show, New York; Zona Maco, Mexico; Artissima and Miart, Milan; Cape Town Art Fair; SP-Arte, São Paulo; Dallas Art Fair; 154, London; and Untitled, Miami.

Selected group exhibitions include Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200 (Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2025) and Seven Contours, One Collection (permanent display, Museum of African Contemporary Art, Marrakech, 2025).

Public and Private include the Brooklyn Museum (USA); MACAAL (Morocco); MONA — Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania); LAM (Netherlands); Bunker Artspace (USA); Galila’s P.O.C. (Belgium); Arsenal Contemporary (Canada); The Braunsfelder Family Collection (Germany); Cloud 7 (Belgium); and the Ekard Collection, among others.

In 2020, Soal was selected as one of ten contemporary artists for Dior Lady Art 5th edition. Residencies include RAW Material Company, Dakar (2019); South African Foundation for Contemporary Art, South Africa (2018) and Brussels (2022); and the Nirox Foundation, Cradle of Humankind (2021).

He has recently published an artist monograph titled To Sharpen our Senses and Sharpen our Touch with the Italian based publisher Skira.