Artist: Zhang Enli

Zhang Enli has used painting to document the more prosaic aspects of contemporary life—everyday objects, interiors and individuals—since his arrival on the Shanghai art scene in the 1990s. This May, Hauser & Wirth presents a new series of his abstract portraits in the artist's debut solo exhibition on the West Coast. While anchored in figuration and paired with descriptive titles, the works convey the essence of their subjects via evocation. Drawing on both Eastern and Western traditions, Zhang pushes toward a looser visual language in order to reveal abstraction’s power to communicate the human condition.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue surveying Zhang's artistic evolution over the past two decades, with an essay by curator Sook-Kyung Lee.