Zhang Enli

  • Zhang Enli In many works, such as Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, Dürer's Self-Portrait in a Fur Coat, Shakespeare's sonnets,...

    Zhang Enli

     
    In many works, such as Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, Dürer's Self-Portrait in a Fur Coat, Shakespeare's sonnets, and Baudelaire's "Hair" in The Flowers of Evil, we can see that the hair of men and women is not only the source of inspiration for painters and poets but also the object in which they devote their passion for life and talents. In a sense, how to characterise hair poses a challenge to artists worldwide. In fact, hair is shown, recalled, and praised as a part of the human body in both visual and literary works. Hair is inseparably linked to a person.
     
    Artists are actually praising people through their depiction of hair. In Zhang Enli's "Hair" series, created in 2014, "hair" itself has become the subject of visual expression. "Hair" is both image and imagination. His material is from print. The "hair" was rearranged by him with scissors and placed on the paper in a new order. They undulate and shimmer with energy, brimming with the vigour of life. Through his collage, the "hair" collided and pushed each other. With the curved pencil lines, he calmly pulled, linked, and pushed the hair to create silent surges weaving the erotic desire, passion, and impulse symbolised by the hair into a visual vortex with rich textures, allowing life energy to flow, circulate and exchange freely.
     
    Zhang Enli participated in the Antarctic Biennale in 2017 with his work Egg. He took a premade "egg" to the exhibition, placed it in a barren, inaccessible polar landscape during the Biennale, and photographed it. The egg's image and the polar region's barrenness constitute a confrontation and a dialogue. The image of life in the egg raises expectations for the origin of life and new life. This artificial installation is not a challenge to nature but a call to humans to get along and coexist with the earth in a better way. Through such subtle human intervention, Zhang Enli not only visually changed the natural landscape but also gave the natural landscape a new meaning. Without damaging nature, he fully realised his conceptual practice and imagination in the photos.
     
    The "Crossover Photography" of the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival is open to all fearless practices that stimulate the expression of photography and video art. As an artist who uses painting as the main means of expression, this time, Zhang Enli presents two video series in which he naturally blurs the boundary between photography and painting, as well as the boundary between photography and sculpture. He not only broadens our imagination about photography practice but also surprises us with unrestrained material and medium. His work proves that nothing that can restrain a good artist's imagination and creativity.
  • ARTIST: Zhang Enli Zhang Enli was born in Jilin province in 1965. He graduated from Wuxi Technical University, Arts and...

    ARTIST: Zhang Enli

     

    Zhang Enli was born in Jilin province in 1965. He graduated from Wuxi Technical University, Arts and Design Institute in 1989. Zhang currently is living and working in Shanghai. Mundane objects and the traces of daily life activities are the dominant depicted subjects in Zhang Enli’s works. The muted tones and loose washes of paint intertwine with the expressive lines and curves that make the objects seem removed as if occupying a liminal reality where only the essence of the object is portrayed on the canvas. In his series of installations, known as Space Paintings, he creates the immersive space that suspends the audience into the void of time and space by incorporating with environment, history and personal experience. Zhang Enli’s depiction on the prosaic aspects of contemporary life leads viewers to think about the proposition of existence. 

  • CURATOR: Gu Zheng Curator, Critic. Born in Shanghai in 1959, Gu Zheng is now a member of Fudan University as...

    CURATOR: Gu Zheng

     

    Curator, Critic.

     

    Born in Shanghai in 1959, Gu Zheng is now a member of Fudan University as the professor at the School of Journalism, the researcher at the Center for Information and Communication Studies, and the deputy director at the Visual Culture Research Center. In 1998, he graduated from the Department of Human Culture Studies at Osaka Prefecture University in Japan with a Ph.D. He is also the Harvard Yanjing visiting scholar in 2017-18. He is also the 9th Heinz Gtze Distinguished Visiting Professor of University of Heidelberg, 2019.
     
    Professor Gu focuses mainly on the 20th century modern art, contemporary Chinese documentary photography, visual culture and image communication research, and photography history. He is the author of “Chinese Contemporary Photographic Art" (2011, Chinese and French), "Photographers on the Road" (2013, Taipei), "The Most Essential Things We Need To Know About Photography" (2016), "No The fairy tale of a happy ending: war, propaganda and images, "From Shanghai - Photography Modernity Verification" (2017), "How do they accept photography" (2018) and so on. He is the editor-in-chief of "Selected Paper on Western Photography" (2005), "Photography, Society, Space" (2010), and "Theory of Chinese Photography" (edited, 2013).
     
    Gu Zheng has won the Golden Statue Award For China Photography (Theoretical Review) (2001) and the first Sha Fei Photography Award Academic Award (2007). He is the finale jury member of World Press Photo (2013).

  • Zhang Enli, Egg, Egg series, 2017. Photography, Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery

  • Zhang Enli, Egg, Egg series, 2017. Photography, Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery

  • Zhang Enli, Egg, Egg series, 2017. Photography, Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery

  • Zhang Enli, Hair, Hair series, 2014. Mixed media collage, 
    80cm × 110cm. Courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery
  • Zhang Enli, Hair, Hair series, 2014. Mixed media collage, 
    80cm × 110cm. Courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery

  • Zhang Enli, Hair, Hair series, 2014. Mixed media collage, 

    80cm × 110cm. Courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery