With New Arrivals, Bruno Zhu (Portugal, 1991) remodels the Foam 3h library into another reading room – one that flattens the representation of reading itself. Twisting time and space, both physically and conceptually, the installation juxtaposes visual motifs from the private space into the public and vice versa. This way, Zhu light-heartedly explores his fascination for photography’s ambivalent symbol as surface and object, representation and appropriation.

During New Arrivals, the Foam 3h room is occupied by flat and unusable representations of mirrors, carpets, bookshelves and lamps. These image-objects conjure an alternative consumer circuit: found furniture imagery is scanned and reprinted as a sticker to the furniture’s original sizes, creating a blur between what is apparent with what is symbolic. Reducing their existence to a spectral impression, these objects exist in a world of ghostly functions. By assimilating decoration as a critical position to activate personal spaces, the uncanny rooms become populated by unbreakable mirrors, dancing tables, photographs, pillowbooks, and so forth. Meanwhile the texts and music of the artist’s great inspiration, Beyoncé, are somehow haunting the library too.

New Arrivals welcomes a new chapter into Bruno Zhu’s research on how desire works within consumer cultures. He has a degree in Fashion Design from Central Saint Martins in London, and is currently attending the Master of Fine Arts at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. His previous installations were largely focused on subverting the topology of the space. Outsourced from catalogues and lifestyle magazines, the images of styled furniture invite readers into a world of brightness and positivity, to imagine the juicy bookshelves in our living rooms, and how enriching they would be to our environments.

Foam 3h is a project space where young artists and photographers are invited by Foam’s curators to present their first solo museum exhibition. They are challenged to experiment, surprise and push the limits of photography.

Bruno Zhu is represented by Jeanine Hofland, Amsterdam.

The festive opening is on Thursday 29 October 2015 from 5.30 pm onwards and includes an interview with the artist by Zippora Elders.

On Tuesday November 24 at 7.30 pm an Artist Talk with Bruno Zhu will be held at Foam. For reservations contact exhibitions@foam.org.