zhang enli at gwangju art biennale 2010

circulez! il n’y a rien à voir, 2007 painting installation image © designboom

zhang enli (b. 1965 jilin province, china)’s spare, delicate paintings often render isolated domestic objects and empty interiors in ethereal veils of color that lend them a melancholic, haunted air. an almost palpable sense of human absence pervades even the most fragmentary and elliptical of zhang’s paintings. ‘container’ (2005), a bone-colored bathtub seen from above, signals a history of past use, while ‘trunk’ (2006) depicts a perspectively skewed wooden box with a discomfiting funerary air, whose awkward contours suggest the psychologically fraught nature of its potential contents. even his imploring, fragmented views of trees and hushed still lives suggest the lingering presence of someone no longer present.

in ‘circulez! il n’y a rien à voir’, showing at the gwanju art biennale 2010, the sense of absence and nostalgia hinted at in other works is brought to the fore. a combination of painting and installation, the work features the shadowy outlines of furniture and objects from zhang’s former apartment in shanghai. the title’s declaration, which translates as “move along! nothing to see here,” is familiar from countless police procedurals. as a result, zhang’s shadow apartment takes on the feeling of a crime scene, as if the ghostly outlines delineated not merely furniture of picture frames but the outlines of some past trauma.

image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom