Art on a Postcard x War Child UK 2024 Part II

About
Orsola Zane (b. 1997, Venice) is a London-based artist working with oil painting and mixed media sculpture and installation. Through her work she investigates themes of isolation, existential anxiety, guilt and human relationships, often creating sculptural mechanisms of physical entrapment, constriction or threat to address them.

Education
Dimploma di I livello in Painting, Fine Arts Academy of Venice, 2020
MFA in Fine Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2022

Select Exhibitions/Awards
Solo:
2022, ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws’, Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London

Group:
2024 ‘As small as eyes’ as part of ASAE collective, Bloc Projects, Sheffield
2023 Artissima Fair with Daniel Benjamin Gallery, Turin (Fair)
2023 ‘Sadness is But a Wall Between Two Gardens’, Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London
2023 Art Brussels with Nino Mier Gallery, Brussels (Fair)
2022 ‘Ghost Show: Haunted House’, Bussey Building, London
2022 ‘Goldsmiths MFA Degree Show’, St James Hatcham Church, Goldsmiths, London
2021 ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries’, South London Gallery, London
2021 ‘Ghost Show’, hARTslane, London
2021 ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries’, Firstsite, Colchester
2021 ‘Things From Inner Space’, Rumit’s flat, London
2020 ‘Palazzo Monti Degree Show’, Palazzo Monti, Brescia
2020 ‘Very Young Italians’, Aucart, online exhibition
2019 ‘Atelier 12’, Art Night at Fine Arts Academy of Venice

Gallery Representation
Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork
"The works are inspired by stills from two different Beckett films, which share themes of guilt, conscience and judgement. ‘Caïn et l'œil’ comes from ‘Film’ (1965), in which a character, O, played by Buster Keaton, tries desperately to escape the eye of the camera, E, by running to his house, hiding his face, and locking himself into his room. As he does so, however, the camera angle changes and we are suddenly seeing this gesture from inside the room, beside him. The short film, which largely references Hugo’s poem ‘La Conscience’, speaks of a character that cannot escape or shut out the all-seeing and all-judging, ruthlessly unyielding stare of conscience. In this painting, and in a previous version on canvas by the same title, I portrayed the moment in which O frantically locks the door, a gesture nullified by the fact that we are there, inside his room, seeing his every move. 
‘Eh, Joe?’ is taken from the BBC version of the television production by the same name (1966). Joe (Jack MacGowran), an aging seducer, sits alone on his bed as a female voice from his past reminds him of his misdeeds and of his failures. Whenever the voice pauses, the camera gets increasingly closer to his face until it sits directly before his eyes.  Joe is silent and virtually still through the entire film, and his reactions to the voice are visible only in his facial expressions and slight changes in demeanour–anger, guilt, fear, indolence mix in an intricate pattern on the actor's face, but when he suddenly breaks into an enigmatic smile as the voice quiets down, we are left to wonder whether he truly felt any long-lasting remorse.


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