 own a small alley, tucked behind the galleries of Shanghai’s Moganshan Lu arts district, lies Zhang Enli’s discreetly hidden studio. Paintings—old and new and ranging in scale—lean against the walls lining the large, raw cement room that is as unassuming as the style he is known for. His large but modest studio space, adorned with only paintings and a small set of a table and sofa, pair perfectly with his all-black attire, bald head and pensive mystique. Zhang Enli is a modern day minimalist.
Zhang Enli cocks his head while he speaks, quietly mumbling through a cloud of his cigarette smoke. He’s not loud, yet he has a lot to say. “What I paint is simple. Yet simple does not necessarily equal easy. In fact, it can be quite difficult.” For Zhang Enli, painting is a process that stems from his own memories and the complicated experiences of aging. In his works, Zhang takes familiar objects and forces us to look at them again, like revisiting an old photo album. It seem too, that this idea is not easily lost on the viewers, most of whom welcome Zhang’s simplicity in the face of so much other contemporary art that, for many, seems unapproachable or too difficult to understand. One of Zhang’s recently shown works, Heads I,2,3 and 4, from 2005-2006, embodies this revered simplicity yet maintains poignancy as well as a contemplative effect on its viewers. The work, composed of four long strips of canvas, is sectioned into about 20 marked squares, each of which contains a small painted acrylic image of a different person’s head as viewed  from the back. Almost all of the figures are male heads and most show sign of aging, with thinning or balding hair. “When I give guided tours, every middle-aged man subconsciously combs his hand through his hair. Many want to find someone they recognize or a head similar to their own,” informs Xiao Ping, the head of education at Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai. “The work is not severely complicated, but it reflects the personality, position, and social status of people.” The brushstroke is slightly exaggerated and cartoonish, yet it seems reminiscent of a classical Chinese style.
Unsurprisingly, Zhang, like many other Chinese artists, began by studying classical Chinese brush paintings with various teachers. Born in Jilin Province, China in 1965, Zhang Enli found his own artistic niche quickly and early on in life. Though no one in his family was of the artistic vein, his family members were extremely supportive of his strong affinity for drawing and painting, even helping him buy various books and magazines with famous artists and  works, both Chinese and international. It was these monthly publications, such as Shijie Yishu and Fuchun JiangHua Bao, that Zhang first gained exposure to the arts of the world. Zhang especially liked Jiang Zhaohe and Jin Nong as well as different Western artists, mainly Renoir, Rembrandt and Ucello. Though these pictures that first captured Zhang’s attention were only reproduced prints of the original works, Zhang was still captivated by their ability to so deeply affect the viewer. Similarly, many of Zhang’s works today are reproductions of original material objects; though we as viewers are removed, they are full of narrative elements.
For Zhang Enli, the process of aging and growing was and is important to how his work has developed. In 1989, Zhang graduated from the Arts & Design Institute of Wuxi Technical University after studying new areas like interior design. At the end of the 90s, Zhang saw his first exhibition of Western art in Tokyo, finally seeing the works from the magazines and books that he so deeply adored as a child.
 Zhang Enli soon realized the ability of memory to create strong connections with what we see. Though previously Zhang Enli had painted pairs of portrait and object paintings, after around the year 2000, his work focused more on just the objects as explicative without their human counterparts. “There is an inseparable bond between people and things,” explains Zhang, “but the people in the portraits always took the spotlight.” Zhang’s portraits, such as Tu Du (Throwing Up) and Butcher are oil paintings with thick, heavy brush strokes, slightly grotesque figures and intense colours, deeply influenced by Munch, one of Zhang’s favourite artists. However, Zhang eventually replaced the portraits, assigning the viewer to draw his or her own sentiments and stories from the objects and their meanings.
The objects in Zhang Enli’s paintings he finds inspiration for in many different places, such as pages torn from magazines or things in shops. More interestingly though, Zhang often uses a camera that he carries with him everyday to capture images he wants to paint. “We look with our eyes, but this is using another kind of eyes. I am uninterested in photography. It is simply a tool, just for detail,” explains Zhang. “I have been painting for many  years. You can’t remember details because everything is constantly changing clearly.” It seems that Zhang’s works long for a distant, more simplistic era. Though he is a contemporary artist, his materials and approach are not strikingly modern. By letting objects take the spotlight, Zhang does not assign an era or cultural identity to his work, yet instead instils them with universal appeal. As many artists turn to media and digital mediums, viewers seem more willing to approach Zhang’s less pretentious paintings.
It seems that aging has influenced Zhang Enli’s work most intensely. He describes the experience of viewing his work as similar to looking back at your younger self; the distinct reminiscent emotion one feels. How these objects remind us of our own memories and what stories the objects tell is what Zhang Enli has for so long conceptualized. For Zhang, people and objects are not exclusive, rather they are intrinsically connected and intertwined. “People are objects too. They are like vessels; something you can fill,” says Zhang. Further, Zhang recognizes that each object has a different meaning to every person. “I want to strip the object to the bone, just leave what it actually is. If you leave a glass on a table, it leaves a watermark. That mark is what I want to express.” In Zhang’s Pails, a series of four paintings of a bucket, each from a different perspective, Zhang builds a complex relationship for an object that otherwise seems simple.
 In Zhang’s newest work, he is beginning to paint parts of people, such as in Breast and Boot, paintings of only a portion of the objects of which they are entitled. Yet he bashfully admits that he is reluctant to paint people. To Zhang, an image of an object contains more than that of a person. “If you see a torn piece of paper, you will wonder what the other half is. When you see an ashtray, you can see the objects within and know I am a chain smoker. Some things are very meaningful.” Says Zhang.
Certainly people have always painted objects, yet Zhang paints the skeleton of an object, the story, why it is meaningful, and what it is worth. He claims his work has no relationship with consumerism; that he does not want to express that. There is a much desired purity to his paintings; his works are not emblazoned with images of the Red Guard, Coca Cola or McDonalds. Rather, It seems that perhaps in his work, Zhang is coping with the fast development of his surroundings, exemplifying nostalgia for simplicity. Aging through these fast developments has caused Zhang Enli to slow down, has allowed him to pause and comment.
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