The phrase “conceptual art” is sometimes deployed as a term of defensive derision. Visiting exhibitions that consisted entirely of empty gallery rooms, such as Yves Klein’s 1958 antic, audiences in the second half of the 20th century were legitimately bewildered and annoyed. It took plenty of time and theory, if not Centre Pompidou’s 2009 Voids retrospective of nine such projects, before this particular concept became so old hat that it no longer upsets anyone.

Zhu didn’t have the foresight to leave Chisenhale empty. Instead, he divided the hangar-like gallery into four garishly decorated rooms, thus inducing visitors to slam doors irately as they sigh in the realisation that each space is more “conceptual” than the last. Trying to jump the art-theoretical queue, Zhu produced a whole book of instructions and explanations. “Histories of violence” and “colonial inheritances” dominate its index.

Without such already hackneyed theory, it is unclear what might induce a visitor or a future art historian to buy into these shallow associations of form and narrative. Zhu’s silly playing-card sculpture box and a cutesy bow – the exhibition’s sole objects – are capable of inspiring neither curiosity nor desire. Faced with so little, one longs for an even emptier room.