Venice Masks

A mask can protect, seduce or conceal. In Venice Masks, shown in the context of A Space Gallery’s Venice programme in 2024, Oraczewski uses this familiar symbol of the city to explore the unstable relation between a recognizable face and an inner life that cannot be seen directly.

The Venetian setting makes the motif especially resonant, but the question reaches beyond carnival. Painted layers and interruptions complicate the surface through which identity appears. Seen beside Broken Masks (2026), the earlier works reveal a developing investigation: first the face as a structure of representation, then its fragmentation into an open field. The mask is never only a costume; it is a way of asking what an image can disclose.