Enrique Martinez Celaya (b. 1964) is an American Cuban-born artist, known for his poetic and metaphorical approach to art making. For his solo presentation in Brussels, Martinez Celaya has created a new work on paper entitled Tu mar y tus hierbas, regarded by the artist as an interpretation in his eternal quest to present a “fragment of poem”, to incorporate words in conjunction with the freshness of drawing.
The work before us demonstrates the romance of the sea, the land, the wildflowers of a meadow and of the waves evoking a vast territory of experience and memory, the artist combining these psychologically charged references that he has employed over the years. Literature as always with Martinez Celaya plays a central role, one of his favourite books remains Herman Melville’s Moby Dick which uses the sea as a focus for the search of truth, to understand life better.
Within this work, the interaction is material, painted vs drawn, black and white vs colour, and it is also temporal, brief flowers vs permanent sea, the ocean suggesting notions of movement, travel, migration, and the flowers a meadow that was left or longed for. The work before us demonstrates deep emotion, combined with simplicity and the ungraspability of experience.
Enrique Martinez Celaya
Tu mar y tus hierbas, 2024
Charcoal, Watercolour, and ink on paper
51.5 x 36 in. / 130 x 91.4 cm unframed
Enrique Martinez Celaya's work is held in 57 public collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art; New York, The Moderna Museet; Stockholm, The Museum of Fine Arts; Houston, Denver Art Museum, Perez Art Museum; Florida and Museum der bildenden kunste Leipzig.
