台北當代藝術館 官方網站 Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei

本次個展，從開展日起，張恩利將進行連續五天的現場繪畫創作，讓作品展示從一樓實驗展場擴延到當代館入口門廊、館內通廊等處的天花板。他在這幾個空間中，或繪製引人注目的具象圖形和抽象畫面、或讓作品結合整個空間中的元素物件，創造出一個看似原來就處於現場的繪畫裝置。藝術家透過這種「實有與虛無」之間的辯證對話，邀請觀者展開一場連結了存在命題與視覺思維的活動。

除了在不同空間現場的即興創作行為之外，實驗展場內將同時鋪陳張恩利90年代憤青時期的創作，到近期專心探究轉譯圖像的作品系列。在近作中，張恩利刻意迴避了政治與文化符號作為繪畫的元素，為中國當代藝術領域開創了不同於85新潮的審美趣味與藝術實踐方式。他的繪畫不對中國當代社會提出問題，也無意在畫中尋找某種答案，或呈現某種結果。他選擇回到繪畫本身，細究創作的一個過程，找尋一種瞬間的感覺。「閑置」展是藝術家探討繪畫之自身意義的一段歷程，透過作品的呈現，刻意地讓觀者體驗某種看似不存在的創作痕跡。正如張恩利自己所說的：「那些消失的痕跡，存在過就好！」 In this exhibition, Zhang will create a site-specific work by painting onsite throughout five days since the exhibition opens. The work will begin from the first-floor MoCA Studio gallery space and extend to the canopy at the museum entrance and the ceiling of the museum hallway. In these spaces, the artist is going to paint both eye-catching, concrete images and abstract expressions, and embed elements and objects in these spaces into his work, creating an installation of space painting that seems to exist since the beginning. Through such a dialectic dialogue between “existence and nothingness,” he invites the audience to partake in a creative activity that connects the topic of existence and the thinking of visual presentation.

In addition to the live creation in various spaces of the museum, the exhibition also includes Zhang’s works of an angry-youth period from the 1990s and a series of recent works, in which he has moved onto his dedicated study of translating images. In his recent works, Zhang has deliberately avoided political and cultural symbols as his painting elements, diverging from the ’85 New Wave and discovering a new form of aesthetics and artistic practice for Chinese contemporary art. His painting does not propose any questions to Chinese contemporary society, neither is it searching for a certain answer or trying to reveal a certain outcome. Instead, he returns to painting itself, and meticulously explores the process of artistic creation to seek that instantaneous feeling. Self-Sustained embodies the artist’s journey of exploring the meaning of painting; and through the presentation of the works, he intentionally allows the audience to experience the traces of artistic creation that do not seem to exist. As Zhang Enli has said, “It would be fine as long as those disappeared traces had once existed!”