Feb 17
By Saida Santana
Azure
In the oeuvre of this Cuban American artist, the fine line between art, philosophy, literature and religion is blurred, almost nonexistent. The complexity of his works will be on view this February at Andersson/Sandström Gallery in Umeå, Sweden.
Artist Enrique Martínez Celaya incorporates multiple media to express his vision of art and life: painting, sculpture, photography or writing. These disciplines are intertwined in particular contexts or environments, in which the line that separates art, philosophy, literature and religion almost seems to disappear. From February 2 to March 7, the complexity of his oeuvre will be displayed at Andersson/Sandström Gallery in Umeå, Sweden, in the exhibition titled A Wasted Journey, A Half-Finished Blaze.
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Feb 10
Feb 2 – Mar 7, 2014
Galleri Andersson/Sandström
Aktrisgränd 34
903 64 UMEÅ
SWEDEN
The exhibition “A Wasted Journey, A Half-Finished Blaze” showcases five new paintings and an impressive sculptural installation that fills the gallery in Umedalen. The main sculpture in this environment presents a bronze boy encrusted with large jewels crying onto a bed of pine needles. His tears carve a channel through the beds as they cascade from one bed to the next. When they reach the last bed, the merger stream falls on a stack of dishes and pots reminiscent of what one might find in the sink of any house. The stream of tears never stops. Martínez presents a metaphorical, mystical world which resists a narrative and is elusive and open to one’s own interpretation.
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Nov 27
November 23, 2013 – January 16, 2014
Opening reception Saturday, November 23, 7-9 pm
Fredric Snitzer Gallery
2249 NW 1st Place
Miami, FL 33127
The mirror has been a frequently recurring signifier in Martínez Celaya’s work, functioning as a proxy subject, a site of uncanny reflexivity, and an object of philosophical inquiry. In Burning As It Were A Lamp, the mirror is again at the center of a dense web of visual, literary and philosophical relationships which investigate issues of identity, memory, and loss through the space of multi-disciplinary installation. The exhibition is a continuation of themes and concepts explored in a recent museum-wide environment at SITE Santa Fe, The Pearl.
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Oct 5
published in Articles, Exhibits
tags : art, Contemporary Cuban Art, Cuba, cuban american art, Cuban American artist, Cuban Art, cuban artist, Cuban Avante Garde, Cuban Culture, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Martinez Celaya, Santa Fe, SITE, Site Santa Fe
July 13–October 13, 2013
SITE Santa Fe
1606 Paseo de Peralta
Santa Fe, NM
In The Pearl, Cuban American artist Enrique Martínez Celaya takes up the drama of youth, wrought as it is with fear, wonder, trepidation and exuberance, in various proportions, and explores both the deterioration of memory and memory’s role in informing the present.
The Pearl is an immersive environment that sprawls across the entirety of SITE Santa Fe’s 12,000 square feet of gallery spaces. Utilizing painting, sculpture, sound, video, and light, the artist creates various installations threaded together by a continuous clear plastic tube of circulating water. The viewer follows the flow of the water from gallery to gallery in a manner suggestive of following a narrative. However, the individual installations are more akin to rhythmic pulses within a meandering melody, or emotional beats within a theatrical performance. They are better described as moments of encounter, sparsely arranged in the vast gallery space, replete with both climaxes and spaces of silence.
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Jul 7
published in Exhibits
tags : Contemporary Cuban Art, cuban american art, Cuban American artist, Cuban Art, cuban artist, Cuban Avante Garde, Cuban Culture, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Santa Fe, Site Santa Fe, The Pearl
SITE Santa Fe is pleased to present a new project by Enrique Martínez Celaya entitled The Pearl. For this exhibition, Martínez Celaya transforms almost 12,000 square feet of SITE’s gallery spaces into an immersive environment that includes painting, sculpture, video, photography, waterwork, sound, and writing, as well as the artist’s first musical arrangement.
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Jul 13
published in Exhibits
tags : Contemporary Cuban Art, Cuba, cuban american art, Cuban American artist, cuban artist, Cuban Avante Garde, Cuban Culture, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Hermitage Museum, Russia, St. Petersburg, The Tower of Snow
Enrique Martínez Celaya’s towering bronze work explores the plight of children exiled from Cuba.
A monumental bronze sculpture by the Miami-based artist Enrique Martínez Celaya is due to be unveiled in the courtyard of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg on 10 July (until 31 November). The Tower of Snow, 2012, which depicts a boy on crutches carrying a house on his back, is the latest large-scale sculpture to be installed in the Russian museum’s courtyard following, among others, Louise Bourgeois’s Maman in 2001 and three reclining figures by Henry Moore in 2011.
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Jun 22
From Art Nexus
Cuban American artist Enrique Martínez-Celaya was selected by a commission from the Hermitage Museum to present his sculpture entitled La Torre de Nieve (The Snow Tower) in the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The work will remain there from July 11 to November 21 of 2012.
La Torre de Nieve addresses migration, the loss of opportunities, and redemption. These themes are embodied in the figure of an overwhelmed looking young individual in crutches who is shown carrying a house on his head and back. This house is tied to the character by a cord tightened around his neck. The sculpture was created in bronze and is 15 feet high.
According to Martínez-Celaya “… La Torre de Nieve represents a journey and the hope of finding a new place for this ‘home.’ This notion of ‘home’ is both metaphorical and physical…”
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Oct 16
Sunday, 10.16.11
By Anne Tschida
Special to the Miami Herald
The entry into this room at the Miami Art Museum, built specifically for this exhibit and seemingly recessed from the main gallery, is startlingly dark.
A dim light ahead suggests the way forward, but meanwhile a loud humming, or more like a chugging sound, fills the space, emanating from an almost old-fashioned looking machine. Turn the corner, and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling reveals a solitary chair, a somber antechamber. The view from the chair is of a bed, also lit by a single light bulb, which in turn has its own view out into a winter forest with trees covered in snow, bereft of leaves. Although the doorway to this third room is blocked by a low fence built of branches, look closely and the bed is covered, literally, in a frozen blanket with pillow.
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Oct 6
October 14, 2011 – January 1, 2012.
Opening Reception for Enrique Martínez Celaya: Schneebett
Featuring Miami Symphony Orchestra
Thursday, October 13, 6-8pm
Miami Art Museum
101 West Flagler Street
Miami, FL 33130
From Soul of Miami
Miami Art Museum will present the United States debut of Enrique Martínez Celaya’s Schneebett, a major installation inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven’s convalescence and death in Vienna, Austria in 1827, originally created for the Berliner Philharmonie. Enrique Martínez Celaya: Schneebett will be on view from October 14, 2011 through January 1, 2012 in the Museum’s Anchor Gallery, a space dedicated to large-scale works from the permanent collection. The exhibition opening will take place October 13, 2011 from 6 to 8pm and feature a performance by members of the Miami Symphony Orchestra.
Schneebett, which reflects on and transports the viewer into the final hours of Ludwig van Beethoven’s life, was the first work of art commissioned for and exhibited at the Berliner Philharmonie since its founding in 1882. It was presented in 2004, and was shown in juxtaposition to the music of the Berliner Philharmoniker with special programming at the American Academy in Berlin. Schneebett was presented again in 2006 at the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig where it offered a counterpoint to Max Klinger’s statue of the heroic Beethoven as the creative genius. The title, Schneebett (“Snow-bed”), is from a poem by Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, a meditation on death. To re-animate the spirit of those celebrated exhibitions, Martínez Celaya created a new version of the installation for Miami Art Museum, which opens with a performance of Beethoven’s late quartets by the Miami Symphony Orchestra. A video of the performance will be on view for the duration of the exhibition.
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Sep 12
By Irina Leyva
Art Nexus Magazine Issue #80 Mar – May 2011
Enrique Martinez Celaya is an extremely prolific and multifaceted artist. He is a painter, a sculptor, a photographer and a writer. He is a restless creator that conceives pieces beyond the limitations of a particular media. That¿s what pushes him to master different medias in order to recreate exactly what he had in mind. Despite the fact that he used various techniques, and consequently each piece is restricted to the potential within it, all his work shows a lyricism that transcends the visual aspect. He brings the poetry of his writings to his canvases, achieving a continuous flux of ideas and metaphors. His work has a fable quality; each one narrates a particular story, all connected to him at some degree.
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