Enrique Martinez Celaya

Recent Paintings

March 31 - April 30, 2005

Statement

John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Enrique Martinez Celaya entitled Boy in the Lanscape. This exhibition opens Thursday, March 31st, and will run through Saturday, April 30th.

This series of new works by Enrique Martinez Celaya, includes a selection of paintings, works on paper, and one sculpture. Martinez Celaya considers this body of work to be "a study of the consequences of fear and isolation in the formation of identity". In keeping with his characteristically spare and poetic aesthetic, his canvases and works on paper are restrained in subject matter yet rich in emotional and spiritual content. Martinez Celaya continues to employ his distinctively iconographic vocabulary of natural imagery. The most resounding theme in this body of work is the isolation of one's own life experience personified though the appearance of a single boy in numerous ethereal landscapes and solitary settings.

Born in Cuba, Martinez Celaya immigrated to Madrid as a child. He went on to earn his B.A. at Cornell in Ithaca, New York before going on to study Quantum Electronics at University of California at Berkeley. He returned to painting, earning his MFA at University of California at Santa Barbara in 1994. Martinez Celaya currently resides in Del Ray Beach, Florida.

Enrique Martinez Celaya's work is represented in a number of important public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of Art, and the Hamburger Bahnhoff in Berlin. Martinez Celaya received the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's "Art Here and Now Award" in 1998 and is the 2001 recipient of The Hirsch Grant.