Bruno Zhu: License to Live

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.

At Chisenhale Gallery, Zhu’s protocols of display are applied across four interconnected rooms; a preliminary staging absent of any objects. As the agreement is entered into by subsequent institutions or individuals, artworks will be selected by Zhu and future commissioners, and introduced into a restaging of the design.

License to Live explores the visual codes and abstractions embedded across public and private spaces, while raising questions related to artistic labour, ownership, and control within cultural production. Underpinning Zhu’s motivation to create a licence agreement are questions of newness within artistic practice. License to Live can be repurposed or recontextualized to produce newness indefinitely.

Following License to Live at Chisenhale Gallery, the commission will be licensed by CAM-Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, where it will be reactivated with a selection of works from its collection of modern and contemporary art.

Talks and events
As part of the commissioning process, a programme of talks and events has been devised in collaboration with Bruno Zhu, spanning the duration of his exhibition.

Tour
Saturday 30 November 2024, 11am–12pm
A walkthrough of License to Live led by artist Bruno Zhu.

Workshop
Saturday 11 January 2025, 2–4pm
A workshop for artists examining agreements, licences, copyright, and IP, facilitated by DACS.

Talk
Thursday, 23 January 2025, 7–8:30pm
A talk by writer and educator Eunsong Kim that traces how racial capitalism and colonialism situated the rise of museum collections and conceptual art forms.

All events are free to attend, but booking is essential. Please visit chisenhale.eventbrite.co.uk.

We are committed to ensuring our events are accessible for all. Please contact mail@chisenhale.org.uk to discuss any access needs. We will endeavour to meet all requests where possible. Please be advised that requests should be made two weeks in advance of the event.

Biography
Bruno Zhu lives and works between Portugal and The Netherlands. Selected exhibitions include: Everybody is Crazy, What Pipeline, Detroit (2023); O Quilombismo, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2023); Chrysalis: The Butterfly Dream, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2023); I am not afraid, Cordova, Barcelona (2022); Myth Makers: Spectrosynthesis III, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); Domestic Drama, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Graz (2021); and Shhhhhhh, UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund), Oslo (2020). He is a member of A Maior, a curatorial program set in a home furnishings and clothing store in Viseu, Portugal.

License to Live is produced and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Licensed by CAM-Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon.

Major Supporter: Cherry Xu.

Lead Supporter: Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

With additional support from the Chisenhale Gallery Commissions Fund and Mondriaan Fund.

With special thanks to our Events Drinks Sponsor: Estrella Damm.

Volume I of Bruno Zhu’s new reader Fiction Non Fiction is co-published by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Mousse Publishing, Milan.

With the generous support of: Mondriaan Fund and Frank Bowling and Rachel Scott.

Chisenhale Gallery’s Schools’ Programme 2024 is made possible through the generosity of Goodman Gallery and Freelands Foundation.

The 2023-24 Asymmetry Curatorial Research Fellow is hosted by Chisenhale Gallery.

Chisenhale Gallery
Registered charity number: 1026175