Bruno Zhu

License to Live

★☆☆☆☆

On until 2 February 2025

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.


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

Jack O’Brien, The Reward at Camden Art Centre ★★☆☆☆

Jack O'Brien

The Reward

★★☆☆☆

No narrative emerges from the tonnes of steel and plastic his work consumed

Max Boyla, Crying like a fire in the sun at Workplace ★★☆☆☆

Max Boyla

Crying like a fire in the sun

★★☆☆☆

Rothko’s abstractions are said to have induced tears in viewers overwhelmed by abstraction. Staring at the sun here, however, barely causes blindness.

Trevor Yeung, Soft Ground, at Gasworks ★★☆☆☆

Trevor Yeung

Soft Ground

★★☆☆☆

It’s stressful enough to fuck in the forest for fear of passers-by or the police; imagine having to also look out for curators.

Dominique Fung, (Up)Rooted, at Massimo de Carlo ★★☆☆☆

Dominique Fung

(Up)Rooted

★★☆☆☆

All this tries to be macabre and surreal like in Bosch or Miyazaki but is instead laughably twee.

Aleksandar Denić, The Serbian pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Aleksandar Denić

Exposition Coloniale

★★★☆☆

Denić took the Biennale’s theme literally, as though he was not in on the art world joke.

Liam Gillick, The Sleepwalkers at Maureen Paley ★★★☆☆

Liam Gillick

The Sleepwalkers

★★★☆☆

Gillick’s practice lacks obviously consistent character, save for it is sparseness of means and the ungraspability of its referents.

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