Zhang Enli 张恩利

Painter Zhang Enli is internationally recognized for his depictions of overlooked everyday objects, such as ropes or bits of string, and his work is noted for its fluid gestures inspired by Chinese brush painting. Zhang graduated from the Wuxi Institute of Arts and Technology in 1989, then moved to Shanghai to teach at Donghua University. His expressionistic portraits of the 1990s and early 2000s portray city dwellers in slashes of paint against dark backgrounds. An oil-on-canvas work from this period, Smoking (2002), featuring a hazy scene of emotionally isolated figures puffing on cigarettes, realized $835,861 at auction in 2021. In the 2000s, Zhang turned to depicting objects like buckets, using a thinner application of paint. Zhang has also worked in installation and immersive “Space Paintings.” His solo exhibitions include presentations at Kunsthalle Bern (2009), the Shanghai Museum (2011), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (2013), the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2015), and the Long Museum Chongqing (2021).