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Joseph Clark Collection

Zhang Enli

Born 1965, Jilin Province · Painting and site-specific Space Paintings

Zhang Enli (born 1965, Jilin Province, China) is a Shanghai-based painter of everyday objects such as cardboard boxes, buckets, hoses and string, who also paints directly onto the walls of rooms in his site-specific Space Paintings. His work is in the collections of Tate and M+.

In the collection

About the artist

Zhang Enli was born in 1965 in Jilin Province, China. He graduated from the Arts & Design Institute of Wuxi Technical University in 1989 and lives and works in Shanghai (Hauser & Wirth). He taught at the Arts and Design Institute of Donghua University (e-flux).

His paintings take familiar, overlooked things as their subject, often seen from unusual viewpoints, and he often works in series, such as his paintings of containers: cardboard boxes, ashtrays, tin chests and lavatories (Wikipedia). In his Space Paintings he paints directly onto the walls of a room to make an immersive environment (Hauser & Wirth). His recent paintings have looser, freer brushwork and move further into abstraction, while keeping descriptive titles (Hauser & Wirth).

In 2006 he became the first Asian artist to join Hauser & Wirth (Hauser & Wirth). In 2013 he spent ten days painting the walls, ceiling and floor of the ICA theatre in London, an area of around 800 square metres (ArtReview). 'A Room That Can Move' at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai (November 2020 to March 2021), curated by Hou Hanru, showed more than 100 paintings from his 30-year career (e-flux). Tate holds his 'Meat Market (2)' (1997) (Tate).

Sources

  1. Hauser & Wirth, artist page
  2. Hauser & Wirth, 'Faces', Hong Kong 2024
  3. Wikipedia
  4. Tate, artist page
  5. Tate, 'Meat Market (2)', 1997
  6. M+, collection makers
  7. ArtReview, Space Painting at the ICA
  8. e-flux, 'A Room That Can Move', Power Station of Art
  9. ShanghART, artist page
  10. Xavier Hufkens, artist page
  11. Xavier Hufkens, 2019 exhibition
A room in the Joseph Clark Collection hung salon-style: framed paintings, drawings and photographs cover two white walls, with sculptures on a teak sideboard and a white plinth below.
Installation view of the Joseph Clark Collection, including works by Zhang Enli, Tamsin Relly, Glenn Ligon, Louise Bourgeois, Ray Parker, Phyllida Barlow, Bengt Rosenström, Antonio Tarsis, Hugo Glendinning, Tim A Shaw, France-Lise McGurn, Mia Chaplin, Fabian Peake and Yukako Shibata.

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