Zhang Enli - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale Hong Kong Friday, October 6, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “We’re all meat on the chopping board, but every once in a while we play the role of the butcher.”
    — Zhang Enli

     

    Zhang’s early works were imbued with an unmissable psychological intensity, tinged with a poignant wistfulness that reflected the artist’s psyche at the time, setting him apart as a true chronicler of a fast-developing China. During the nineties and early 2000s, the artist exclusively named a large body of works the Butcher series, each featuring expressionistic techniques and dark colour palettes. The present piece, Untitled, typifies works from this very series: the figures’ faces are obscured by dizzying strokes, their slashes reminiscent of the action of slicing through meat, perhaps. As eloquently summarised in a preface to Zhang’s recent exhibition at the He Museum, 'The[se] lines are restrained, or rather cunning, to prevent the voyeur from seeing their original faces, so they put on masks disguised as wrinkles, such as the lines of muscles, the folds of shirts, the sagging contours of hips, and begin an unrestrained revelry. The characters are bloodthirsty, and the slightly numb ones seem to have their eyes opened in anger, which Zhang Enli named the 'butcher' stage.'i The connection to butchers and meat would be tenuous if not for the red sinuous tendrils snaking throughout the picture planes, and the over all effect is impactful: we are transported to the works of German Expressionists, Francis Bacon, and even to fellow contemporary Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi’s early pieces. We feel starkly a melancholy and ennui that hum throughout.

     

    Upon graduation from Jiangsu’s Arts & Design Institute of Wuxi Technical University in 1989, Zhang began teaching at Shanghai’s Donghua University, and his everyday life in this new city became the main topic of his paintings. With humble beginnings, armed only with a meagre salary and ample quantities of free time, the artist reminisced, 'I had nothing else to do but paint, let alone go out for a drink.'ii The days were long, and life was hard, with no exhibition prospects on the horizon. Finally in 1995, Zhang was allocated a small apartment near the school, and one year later, relocated to a larger flat opposite a local market. He became fascinated with the medley of characters frequenting the market, routinely visiting it daily: 'I loved meat, therefore those butchers became the objects for me to observe. Most characters in my paintings were based on the people who sold meat and vegetables. In 1997, I painted two paintings called Meat Market (1) and (2) [now in the collection of The Tate], and painted more and more later on. I ended up painting several works of those who sold meat, called The Butcher.'iii

     

     

    Max Beckmann, Women at the Butcher (Frauen beim Fleischer), 1914
    Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York

     

    On the subject matter of meat and the fragility of the human condition, one’s mind immediately turns to the oeuvres of the likes of Max Beckmann, Chaïm Soutine, and of course the aforementioned Francis Bacon and Zeng Fanzhi. A sentiment that dwells between resignation and frustration permeates all such works, and an acquiescent vulnerability lingers. Zhang, while looking back on his Butcher works remarked, 'This sense of stress in the image mainly was caused by an unalterable current situation which brought me great anxiety and hopelessness. In the early ’90s, I wrote a sentence: "We’re all meat on the chopping board, but every once in a while we play the role of the butcher."'iv


    To chop, or be chopped: the frenzied unease one feels, especially in youth, is palpable in works such as the Untitled pair. Aptly capturing the zeitgeist of a fast-modernising China, Zhang’s turbulent and whirling strokes contrast with the simplicity of his subject matter: the humble butcher. Using such a singular, powerful metaphor, the artist lends a sympathetic eye to ordinary struggles, uniting us in this regard.   


    Collector’s Digest


    Based in Shanghai, Zhang has held numerous solo exhibitions worldwide such as at the Long Museum, Chongqing, China; K11 Foundation, China; Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan; ICA Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK; and more. His works are in the permanent collections of K11 Foundation, China; Tate London, UK; and more. Most recently, the artist had a solo exhibition with HEM He Art Museum in Guangdong, China. Featuring over 50 paintings and site-specific installations, the exhibition was held between 17 February –14 May 2023. 


    iQuoted in ‘Lines, Paradoxes and Portraits’, He Museum, 2023, online
    iiZhang Enli, in email correspondence with Tate curator Sook-Kyung Lee, 4 May 2017, online
    iiiIbid.

    ivIbid.
     

    • Provenance

      ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
      Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2003

Ж149

Two works: Untitled from the Butcher series

each signed and dated 'ENLI 99' lower right
oil on linen
each 40.8 x 40.8 cm. (16 1/8 x 16 1/8 in.)
Painted in 1999.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
HK$350,000 - 550,000 
€42,600-67,000
$44,900-70,500

Sold for HK$355,600

Contact Specialist

Anastasia Salnikoff
Head of Day Sale, Associate Specialist
+852 2318 2014
anastasiasalnikoff@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

Hong Kong Auction 7 October 2023