BIO

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1995, Zagreb.

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Diana Zrnic is an emerging artist based in London.
She completed a postgraduate degree in MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2021 after graduating from the Academy of Fine Art in Zagreb in 2018. Her artworks have been shown in group and solo exhibitions internationally, including The Stone Space gallery (London), Saatchi Gallery (London), Mestrovic Pavilion (Zagreb), and House of Ebata (Tokyo). Recently, as part of RBA Rising Stars, she had her work exhibited at ROSL and was one of ten artists invited to do a Radical Residency at Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop.
Working with paintings and sculptures, Zrnic makes series of works where each informs the other, creating a peculiar and mystifying narrative through reoccurring symbolic motifs. Within figurative art, she explores how the body transforms into an extension of the world in which it is situated. Each work proposes a space, or a moment in that space when the inside spills out and the outside sneaks in. Facing staged situations in which the tangible and the internal intertwine and flicker, one is invited to look for hidden meanings.

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STATEMENT

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My practice encompasses figurative painting and sculpture.
The juxtaposition of the two creates a pathway for me to explore the relationship between different types of spaces and different kinds of interaction. Through a method of reimagination and recycling of my own imagery, I treat both as a source of infinite potential alternate framings to get a limitless generation of other images from any part of itself.
One work informs the next, where endless re-enactments and revisions mean thinking things anew. Inspired by the new spatiality of the 21st century, often described as the proliferation of spaces and defined by the hybrid condition of living, recent artworks evolved around the idea of simultaneity, displacement, and duality.
I am interested in looking at the body as a co-processor of all information and in the conception of reality that assumes being implicated in an excessive number of processes at various scales. When exploring the nexus interlinking space, image, and body, I always ask myself, how does the body transform into an extension of the world in which it is situated?

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Education

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2019 – 2021

MFA Fine Art
Goldsmiths, University of London

2014 – 2018

BA Fine Arts, Painting
Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb

January 2017 – June 2017

ERASMUS + student exchange program
BA (HONS) Fine Arts, Ulster University, Belfast

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Research experience

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July - August 2022

Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, Radical Residency VII, London

March-May 2019

Cultural Centre Vanha Paukku, Artist Residency, Lapua, Finland

October – February 2018/2019

coGalleries, Erasmus Traineeship, Berlin

August – September 2017

Hannacc Residence for Arts and Creativity, Artist in Residence, Barcelona

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Awards & Honours

2022

Shortlisted for Rome Scholarship
Shortlisted for The Other Art Fair’s New Futures
Shortlisted for RBA annual exhibition, Mall Galleries
Shortlisted for Camberwell Station Public Artwork

2018

Rector’s Award for Excellence, Category D for team scientific and artistic work, University of Zagreb
3rd prize at Grisia, open-air exhibition competition, Rovinj, Croatia

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Exhibitions

2022

The Stone Space, solo exhibition, Hold on, London
Chisenhale Art Place, Not to be a Singular Being, London
Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, Radical Residency VII Exhibition, London
Mestrovic Pavilion, Croatian Association of Visual Artists Annual Exhibition, Zagreb
Chelsea College of Art, Duty-Free Art School, London
ROSL, RBA Rising Stars, London
Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, Ghost-Like Traces, London
St. James Hatcham, SE Micro Sculpture Fair 2022, London
Gallery No. 32, Winter Sculpture Park 2022, London
House of Ebata, Green, Tokyo

2021

Saatchi Gallery, Grads Now, London
Home of HDLU, 6th Biennial of Painting, Zagreb
Mestrovic Pavilion, Croatian Association of Visual Artists Annual Exhibition, Zagreb
Goldsmiths Department of Art, Postgraduate Exhibition 2021, London
Proposition Studios gallery, Size Matters, London
Deptford X, Access, London
Tiflology Museum, Lokve, Zagreb

2020

beamcollective.net, Nature: Morte?, online
Dubec library, solo exhibition Nisam ni ja zaboravila da me je hrvatska mati rodila, Zagreb
Gallery St Toma, solo exhibition Fluid Identity – Fluid Body, Grisia Youth, Rovinj

2019

MMC Gallery Umag, San povjerenja (The Dream of Trust), Umag
S-Market, solo exhibition Desires, Lapua, Finland
Patruunagalleria, Tassa Ja Nyt (Here and Now), Lapua
coGalleries, solo exhibition Seeking for…, Berlin

2018

Veliki tabor, Art and Beauty Against Prejudice, Desinic
Gallery Šira, Venientes, Zagreb
Gallery ULUPUH, Retrospectively through Slavic Culture, Zagreb
Gallery Beck, Emotion/Association, Zagreb

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Commissions

2 murals:
Gorska suma and Lokvarsko jezero, and a cave installation Spilja Lokvarka, commissioned by Tiflology Museum, 2020, Zagreb Triptych Trifocal Red Desire, in the collection of Lapua Art Museum, Kulttuurikeskus Vanha Paukku 4 paintings from the series Seeking for…, in the collection of Rovigno City Museum

Mural commissioned by Vinyard House Ltd

 

Publications

Zrnic, Diana. History of ALU. In Student Journal for Fine Arts Skica (Sketch) 1, no 3. (2018) Zagreb: Academy of Fine Arts.

Zrnic, Diana. Incredible Work of Mario Udzenija and Mirna Mederal. In Student Journal for Fine Arts Skica (Sketch) 1, no 1. (2016) Zagreb: Academy of Fine Arts.

Zrnic, Diana. Illustration of poetry collection Valiza mojeh rikorde. In Disiot, Nadija. (2015) Buje: Matica hrvatska.

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