Earlier in his career, the artist Zhang Enli focused on figurative painting. He also made objects that sensitively depicted household items like hoses and containers. Later, his attention shifted to the outdoors, and he began to paint natural and urban landscapes. With freer, loser brushwork Zhang Enli is now painting people, not figuratively but in the abstract, invoking the essence of characters as diverse as “The Single Mother,” “The Strong Labourer,” “The Professor,” and more. —E.C.