Zhang Enli: The Box – Hauser & Wirth London

Zhang Enli
Transparent Shelf, 2013
Oil on canvas, 200 x 230 cm / 78 3/4 x 90 1/2 in

Zhang Enli
Temporary Space, 2013
Oil on canvas, 300 x 250 cm / 118 1/8 x 98 3/8 in

Zhang Enli: The Box – Hauser & Wirth London For ‘The Box’, Zhang’s second exhibition with Hauser & Wirth in London, the artist presents his first-ever sculptural installation alongside a new series of paintings. 10 January – 1 March 2014.]]>

Source: Hauser & Wirth London

Zhang Enli is a champion of forgotten spaces and objects. His practice is grounded in melancholic portrayals of objects or places from everyday life, through painting, sculpture or installation such as ‘Space Paintings’, in which he paints directly onto the walls, ceilings and floors of a room.

In his paintings, Zhang creates an index of commonplace objects related to humanity. Taking visual material from whatever is close at hand – a piece of string, a hose, a marble ball from the floor of his studio – Zhang draws us into his world, documenting the more prosaic aspects of contemporary life.

Influenced by the loose washes of traditional Chinese brush painting, Zhang dilutes his paint until it is almost like a glaze, leaving pencil-drawn grids visible beneath the layers of paint. By allowing the grids to show through the painted surface, Zhang constantly reminds us that his paintings are artistic constructs, not direct replicas of any given object. The perspective of each painting is skewed to heighten the drama of the object’s shape, but Zhang’s expressive lines and curves are kept in check within this measured framework. In this way the rigid structure of his pencil-drawn grids can be viewed as a means of ordering the chaos of contemporary life.

Zhang’s paintings are rarely produced from direct observation, but from sketches, photographs and, significantly, from his memories of the objects he is depicting. The muted tones and thin application of paint make the objects seem not quite present, as if occupying a liminal reality where only the essence of the object is depicted on the canvas. His subject matter is usually enlarged, so that only a specific fragment of a scene is shown, as seen through the viewfinder on a camera. In ‘Architecture’, Zhang portrays a modern building, but instead of a sweeping cityscape, he hones in on a section of a window, contrasting the transparent bluish hue of the glass pane against the building’s heavy structural lines. Although Zhang chooses to work with grids, a common technique when enlarging photographs, this belies the nature of his practice, since his depictions are not faithful renditions of objects, but highly personal offerings.

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