Artists

Bruno Zhu

Press release

Influenced by fashion design, publishing and scenography, Bruno Zhu’s object-led installations explore notions of agency, authorship, consumption and power. License to Live marks Zhu’s first institutional UK solo exhibition which centres a written licence agreement as his response to the invitation to develop a new commission.  

Authored by Zhu, the agreement details a step-by-step guide to exhibition design that traverses colour, display, ornamentation, and orientation. Specific tones of red, green, yellow, blue and purple have been selected by Zhu based on their histories of toxic production and relationship to applied arts. When painted across walls and doors, they create a colour code that draws attention to surface as site. Cabinets with openings shaped like playing card symbols – motifs that recur across Zhu’s practice – point to the abstraction of histories of violence, and the colonial inheritances of display commonly found across museums and historic homes. The agreement’s instruction to tie bows around objects, brings formal devices of desire and consumerism into contact with sites of artistic production. A reorientation of 19th century design – parquet flooring, damask style wallpaper, and ornate mouldings turned on their side – traces the reproducibility of historical styles for a mass market.