Enrique Martínez Celaya

New Work at MAM Museum. From Nov 2nd, 2007 through Jan 13th, 2008.

Enrique Martínez Celaya. Miami Artist
Enrique Martínez Celaya, winner of this year’s National Artist Award from the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, will premiere Nomad, an installation of new paintings at Miami Art Museum. Cuban-born Martínez Celaya is creating this group of five large-scale, oil-and-wax paintings which explore issues of exile and rootlessness, especially for this exhibition.

Nomad’s enormous central painting, ten feet tall by twenty-one feet wide, features the image of a leopard crossing a wintry landscape, a traveler out of place in time and space. The canvas is rendered entirely in black-and-white. Flanking this image are four paintings symbolic of the seasons, painted in virtuoso fashion and in rich, full color.  Each of these “seasons” paintings features a central image of a young girl carrying a dead leopard over her shoulders. The paintings evoke the dream-like state of suspension in which the exile lives: time passes and yet nothing changes.

Martínez Celaya works in a variety of media, including painting, photography, sculpture and installation. He is perhaps best known for his large-scale paintings made from tar and other materials. Influenced by the writings of poets and philosophers, these rich and brooding paintings suggest deep feelings of loneliness, yearning and desire for connection.  His portrait of Leon Golub was included in MAM’s presentation of Big Juicy Paintings in 2006.

Miami Art Museum. 101 West Flagler Street. Miami, FL 33130. Ph: 305.375.3000. www.miamiartmuseum.org

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