Bruno Zhu at Fragile

Artist: Bruno Zhu

Exhibition title: Chic

Venue: Fragile, Berlin, Germany

Date: March 7 – May 31, 2020

Photography: Giorgia Palmisano / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Fragile, Berlin

Fragile is pleased to announce the collaboration with Bruno Zhu for his solo show Chic.

I kept returning to ‘whys’. Back then as I photographed: why the vertical format, why the raised, fallen figures? And now: why the recurring scenes, why bodies, events in arousal? Heat. Perhaps it never was about photographing ‘sex’, but about being driven by it, so a parallel between the camera lens and the phallus is drawn. Shooting, jerking, pressing. Constantly stunted by the shutter and the membrane.

Proverbs like ‘curiosity killed the cat’ or ‘Peeping Tom’ came to mind. They are folky warnings to not look beyond one’s means. But what if one does, what would one see? Peeping Tom went blind after spying Lady Godiva on her horse riding naked down the streets. And even though my work is not about Tom, it was poignant to remember cautionary tales where vision-knowledge-discovery are tied to human fatalism: when is an opportunity too risky, when is a cut too deep? Ah, according to folklore, Tom was a tailor!