Based at Somerset House Studios, van Zyl's multidisciplinary practice combines film, performance, writing and sculpture.
His work integrates these disciplines in hallucinant, immersive installations, typically centred around film. These films follow fantastical communities inhabiting fleeting spaces: ghouls breeding cakes in aircrafts, inflatable beasts in a desert fortress, or rats writhing in love hotels.
Binaries are displaced by instability, deviance and multiple selves as his films undertake a carnivalesque exploration of abandoned yet grandiose neoliberal landscapes; an underworld revolt of transient spaces encompassing the hotel, the office, the stage and the set. Beyond the screen, the characters and their worlds have a material legacy as sculptural escapes that are incorporated alongside the films in cinematic theatres.
Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Edel Assanti, London; Tramway, Glasgow; Rose Easton, London; Horse Hospital, London and selected group presentations at CAPC, Bordeaux; Hayward Gallery, London; Somerset House, London.