Zhang Enli

de Anne Pontégnie

Born in rural China, Zhang Enli eventually made his way to Shanghai where he witnessed the massive transformations which were taking place in the city in the 1990s. At the time he was painting raw and expressive portraits of the people he encountered working and living there. Later he started producing more lyrical works on canvas, often inspired by seemingly ordinary objects or aspects of everyday life, such as urban structures or landscape features. A master of colour and light, Zhang strives to capture the immaterial and essential qualities of the object, such as the implications of transparency, softness, or flexibility. This catalogue presents older and more recent work. 00Exhibition: Xavier Hufkens Gallery,Brussels, Belgium, September 6-October 19, 2019.