Bruno Zhu’s commission for IN SITU takes the form of an imposing system of revolving walls using the exhibition space’s central pillars as an axis. Operating like two engaged, interlocking gears, the artist’s site-responsive passageway disrupts the open space, forcefully creating two separate zones. Polarised yet permeable, the two zones are intermittently connected since the central mechanism is designed to be pushed. What initially appears to be a severe division of space is instead a rousing call to challenge it.
Out marks a significant development in the artist’s study of the politics of display, having previously proposed an exhibition design under a licencing agreement in response to a commissioning program and styled another institution as a cladded velvet jewellery box in which artworks were placed. Zhu’s IN SITU commission choreographs the experience of seeing art, privileging art direction as a medium over art production in a practice that already spans fashion design, publishing, and scenography. Out’s explicit confrontational quality is deceiving in its stubborn simplicity. Rather than upholding a binary worldview, it is an invitation to push through walls to seek potential states of emergence. Movement invites negotiation, which in turn encourages exchange and transformation.
Bruno Zhu lives and works between Portugal and The Netherlands. His practice employs methods that cut, stitch, and write against normative modes of knowledge production and social reproduction. Recent projects include exhibitions at Chisenhale Gallery in London, Para Site in Hong Kong, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Veronica in Seattle, Kunsthalle Zurich in Zurich, What Pipeline in Detroit, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Zhu is a member of A Maior, a curatorial program set in the eponymous home furnishings and clothing store in Viseu, Portugal.
Public opening: Thursday, 13 February 2025
With the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgium and the Mondriaan Fonds.muhka.be/en/exhibitions/bruno-zhu-outinfo@muhka.be
Artists: Bruno Zhu