DSL Collection

"...Zhang Enli portraits every detail and gesture of everyday objects that often seem down played or neglected in conventional painting. His brushstrokes almost comes close to traditional Chinese ink painting where every stroke on the canvas articulates details that are significant to the whole. The transparent application of paint, and the immediacy of his gesture, are contrasted to the meticulously planning and inquiry that foregrounds every new series of paintings: Zhang Enli's mode of engagement entails photographically documenting his close environment. He then employs the photo's claim on the real to develop his examination of his surroundings, though in a more intuitive and fragmented manner on the canvas. The circuitous route by which Zhang Enli comes to the image is typical of a methodology based on the experience of memory. It is not the repeated image that is central to each painting, but rather the process of reflection on the events and objects that led him to it. Accordingly, in his current paintings of trees and interiors, only fragments are revealed to the spectator. As in his other work, these paintings come somehow across as 'un-finished' - the paintings being semi-transparent with the appearance of the white of the canvas. This could be understood, as the emergence of reality into the sphere of the art, or, perhaps, vice versa. In his paintings we see traces of grid-patterns utilized to translate the object in the photograph into his paintings. In a world where everything is represented, it is the processing of the representations that offer something new. In other words, the raster is a trace of the process on how the artist engages and (re)interprets his surroundings. Zhang Enli translates the slick surface of the photograph into a more subtle and nuanced image, which we are compelled to slow down and spend time with"

by Sine Bepler- 2007-11-12- ShangArt Gallery