Zena Van den Block works mainly with images from popular culture, around recurring habits and starting from a passion for collecting and an urge for patterns. She searches for translations of discovered patterns in behavior or use of materials and communication by creating context or reversing it. This is often done through play and chance. Publications and multiples are a recurring form of work given the flexibility and divisibility of the medium.
She does not limit herself to one medium, but investigates which material best expresses an underlying idea. She uses puzzles, commercial printed matter, building materials, digital images and other materials that come to her by chance. Photography is often present in both the process and the end point of a work, but she approaches it as a means that is similar to paint or clay, for example. She also likes to explore the boundaries between exhibition spaces and the public sphere and investigates how the content of a work is co-determined by the context in which it is shown and how chance passers-by react to it.
Because her practice starts from an everyday and recognizable visual language, it is at first sight readable for a broad audience. She strives for accessibility in her work by involving viewers, and by building up the content of her work in different layers.The first layer is usually very recognizable, and the viewer is free to discover the other layers.She tries to make the viewer pay attention to beauty in our everyday environment and to expose absurd situations through humor.
