JOURNAL

A Deeper Unity

The work of Enrique Martínez Celaya resists categorization.  He uses painting, sculpture, photography, prose, poetry, and publishing to achieve clarity and understanding about the world and his place in it.  Through environments and projects he concentrate particular attention on the transitory and ephemeral nature of life, as embodied in the experience of exile and loss, as well as the burden of memory amidst the abiding presence of hope and love.  The results of some of these projects are presented as cohesive and self-sufficient environments, such as The Field at historic St. Pancras Chambers in London (1999), Schneebett at the Berlin Philharmonic (2004), Coming Home at the Sheldon Museum of Art and a collaboration with the Cowboy Junkies (2006), Nomad at the Miami Art Museum (2007), and The Crossing at The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York (2010).  Other environments and projects are more self-consciously presented as fragments, studies, works in progress, or specific investigations of larger projects, which span several years. 

In a review of Redemption (1997), an important early environment, which consisted of a group of philosophical writings, poems, sculptures, and paintings, at Burnett Miller Gallery in Santa Monica, a critic erroneously assumed it to be a group show.  This mistake nevertheless points to an important characteristic of Martínez Celaya's work.  Its unity is not located on the surface.  In fact, he compounds the aesthetic and diversity of his environments and projects by pressing sharp juxtapositions and forcing tense compressions between them.  This implies a deeper unity that remains just beyond our grasp, behind or beneath the work.  Yet each work, environment, or project creates the faint perception that it will be the next painting, the next exhibition, the next publication that will reveal this deep unity, the structural foundation on which Martínez Celaya's work stands. His work asks that we go deeper, beyond.

It is for this reason that the recent release of Enrique Martínez Celaya:  Collected Writings & Interviews, 1990-2010 by the University of Nebraska Press should be received with enthusiasm for those who follow Martínez Celaya's work carefully. Spanning twenty years, this publication includes eighty texts, written in different contexts and for a multitude of different purposes, which offer important insights into this deeper unity as well as revealing the extent to which writing drives his artistic practice.  In fact, it is tempting to suggest that Martínez Celaya paints as a writer.    

 

What does painting as a writer mean? And what do the texts in this publication reveal about the deeper unity and logic that sustains Martínez Celaya's work?  I will approach these and other questions in subsequent posts.