Holly Zausner – Psychostasia

Un film di Holly Zausner.

Comunicato stampa

Holly Zausner is pleased to invite you to the premiere of Psychostasia, the artist’s most recent film that follows a woman on her search for answers to universal questions about the human condition, through emotionally-charged interactions with the art and architecture of Venice. Psychostasia will premiere at the Palazzo Michiel dal Brusa from April 20 - May 15, 10:00 - 19:00.

The film, shot entirely on location in Venice, opens with the protagonist (played by Zausner) attempting to navigate her way through a large maze in search of a way out. The visual metaphor of a labyrinth serves as the guiding principle of the film - exploring meaning within our life choices and confronting ideas of mortality - taking her through a series of interior and exterior spaces in Venice and tracing a mazelike path that takes her deeper and deeper into the complex cultural history of the city.

In her quest for answers, the character passes through many sites in Venice, including the Galleria Franchetti, the Scola di San Rocco, the Palazzo Grimani, the St. Michelle island cemetery, and the Venetian School of Music. On her journey she encounters lavish spaces housing the sculptures and paintings of Tintoretto, crosses the Grand Lagoon in a rowing boat at dawn towards St. Michelle Island (the cemetery island of Venice), and in the final scene, observes the details of a 13th century Byzantine mosaic depicting the Last Judgement.

Psychostasia, which refers to the soul being weighed by a divine authority in an act of judgment, is a concept that can be found in religions throughout the world, including Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. In Christianity, this weighing of the soul appears most often in the well-known form of the Last Judgment, which was an especially popular subject of medieval and Renaissance European art. Rather than investigating the human condition through the lens of religion, Zausner’s film asks us to consider how the humanistic traditions of the arts, as embodied in the cultural history of Venice, serve to guide as in this never-ending set of questions about human life.

Zausner has shown internationally at Neue National Galerie, Hamburger Bahnhof Gegenwurt, Bode-Museum, KW, Singapore Art Museum, Brandts Klaede Fabrik, Herbert Johnson Museum, Moore Museum of Art and Design, Syracuse Art Museum, etc.

https://www.hollyzausner.com