Zhang Enli

Zhang Enli works invest life into the most common of signifiers from details of trees and lace curtains to bare mattresses and rubber tubing. Imbuing his subjects with human relevance, he has said ‘I deal with reality in order to express something that goes beyond reality’ and as such he draws on the viewer’s desires for the most simple aspects of existence. Painting with thin washes of pigment, which often leave traces of turpentine dripping down the canvas, he achieves a sophistication and richness that balances the apparent simplicity of his technique and subject matter.
Having grown up in the provincial town of Jilin in the north of China, his work continues to be strongly marked by his experience of this transition, 20 years ago, to the sprawling metropolis of Shanghai. He represents this extreme contrast to the smaller city he was accustomed to, not through the consumerist preoccupation so common in contemporary Chinese painting coming from its major cities, but by looking at the ordinary, unpretentious objects that surround him and the immigrants coming from the countryside to Shanghai.

With thanks to Hauser and Wirth

http://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/