Group Exhibition
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, characterising hair poses a challenge to artists worldwide. 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 praise people through their depiction of hair. In Zhang Enli's "Hair" series, created in 2014, "hair" 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 better. 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 primary 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 broadens our imagination about photography practice and surprises us with unrestrained material and medium. His work proves that nothing that can restrain a good artist's imagination and creativity.
by Curator Gu Zhen
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