Artist Enrique Martínez Celaya sits in front of “Birch (wood-milk) 2002,” an oil and tar on canvas painting, now on view at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery O c t o b e r black and white birches open and then dissolve in the light of morning. A morning of feathers, of the frail water of snow.

In the clearing the merciful raises his handless arm. The architect of black bark releases a dove of the lightest wood. The wood of your exit.

All doors open to a withering garden from which you will not return. In the unspoken white of the hour of angels the remembered, bruised and restless, collapses unheard on icy leaves. The mirror that you placed on his antlers rolls and softly etches a line and when it comes to rest It is all sky– unveiled, beyond mercy.

In the reflection a dove opens then dissolves in the light of morning. A morning of hunger, of the coming of winter.

In the unspoken white of the hour of angels the remembered, bruised and restless, collapses unheard on icy leaves. The mirror that you placed on his antlers rolls and softly etches a line and when it comes to rest it is all sky–unvelied, beyond mercy.

–Enrique Martínez Celaya, reprinted with permission.

p r e m o n i t i o n o f w i n t e r

BY L. KENT WOLGAMOTT Blackness that provides the underpinning for "The October Lincoln Journal Star Cycle, 2000-2002," a pivotal series in the career of Enrique A Martínez Celaya, a Cuban emigre now living in who is emerging as one of today's most important artists. A wintry white tree sits alone in the cold. A flash of brownish A poet, sculptor and photographer as well as a painter, gold light falls over the outline of a person. A pensive Martínez Celaya is seeing his works purchased by major figure, he ad slightly bowed, appears to be moving across a museums around the world and much coveted by collectors. broad field. The field is black. So is the background of every Unlike many contemporary artists who make art based on other image. theory, attempt to "shock" or create just to sell, Martínez A black that varies in shade. A black that reflects. A black Celaya is concerned with meaning, with aesthetics, with that invites study, then contemplation. morality, ethics and spirituality. Those elements can all be seen in the 22 paintings of Is there some sense of finding beauty in this material that "The October Cycle," which are being shown together for people think is the ugly, smelly stuff you put on your roof or on the first time at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. the street? "The exhibition is a product of our desire to do something "That's a very good question. What people call the beautiful, meaningful together, something that would challenge him as what they really mean is the pretty. The beautiful in my mind an artist and challenge me as a critic and curator," said Sheldon is that which works, that which is true, that is beautiful. curator Daniel Siedell, who Ty p i c a l l y, in order to get there and put together the exhibition –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– not get confused with all the noise over the past two years. ‘At the end, I would like it if it pulls of the pretty, sometimes you've got Martínez Celaya spent the to go exactly where it is disgusting. week before the show's Nov. you away from the grotesque into There's a seduction in that also. 21 opening in Lincoln giving something that is inevitable. That There's a fetishistic quality of lectures and gallery talks, inevitability is in the direction of going to these kind of rough things, doing studio critiques with and that becomes its own University of Nebraska- what I call the beautiful.’ mannerism. So what I'm always Lincoln art students and –Enrique Martínez Celaya interested in doing is undermining s i t t i n g down for interviews -- –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– my own comfort with something all part of his effort to build that may have been uncomfortable a bridge to his art. at first, but no longer is.... Martínez Celaya talks about the paintings in "The October "At the end, I would like it if it pulls you away from the Cycle" as striking a balance between presence and reference. grotesque into something that is inevitable. That inevitability is That is, that they manage to work both as objects in and of in the direction of what I call the beautiful." themselves, drawing on the ideas of minimalism, and as That kind of turns the classic "the good, the true and the representative pieces with subject matter. beautiful" on its head. I think that's one of the reasons people L a rge and dark, the paintings are captivating rectangles have some difficulty with contemporary art -- they don't of negative space hanging on the walls of Sheldon's white understand that that idea can change from Renaissance painting. cube galleries. Made of tar -- and, in two cases, tar and feathers -- the paintings have physical depth rarely achieved with oil and are carefully controlled explorations of reflection and absorption of light. Close examination reveals myriad tones of black and surfaces that can be smooth, etched with lines or, in the case of "Woodrooms," a depiction of a pinkish seashell, rough and unsettled because of the feathers embedded in the emulsified tar that Martínez Celaya has made his medium. Painting into tar is a far different process than painting into oil. The colors he applies to the tar change or fade away entirely, requiring multiple layers to create the precise shades and level of visibility. But that repetition is far from frustrating for the artist. "It allowed me to do this thing I could never resolve before," Martínez Celaya said. "I could be as spontaneous and gestural as I want in a moment of painting. But then most of it disappears under the tar. And I get to rework it and rework it. So I can be meticulous and spontaneous at once." This reworking is one of the keys to Martínez Celaya's paintings. Deliberately spare and simple to the point of near crudeness, the paintings are crafted to create tension. If a painting is easily resolved and understood, Martínez Celaya paints over it, eliminating all or part of the imagery to deliberately undermine the work and force an uneasy ambiguity onto the picture plane.

• • • “Distance,” 2002, Oil and tar on canvas. The "October" imagery was most explicitly seen in "Coming Home," a 2001 sculpture of a boy and large elk created out of tar and feathers. But some of it continues in the paintings of starkly beautiful trees and snowflakes on view at Sheldon. For October, in Martínez Celaya's mind, presents the first hint of winter and stands as an invitation to introspection.

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Since we're on the subject of poetry, how do the two relate? Most visual artists aren't real adept with words, and you seem to be able to put both of them together. "I think originally this split happened back when I was in high school. I had been trained academically as an artist and as I moved into contemporary art and modern art, I found very few role models I was interested in. I was not really interested in what was happening visually, but I was interested in the contemporary moment. I found all the people I was thinking about and were sources were literary people -- writers and poets. Which is very interesting. So when people would ask me, 'What are your influences?' I would always talk about “Woodrooms” is one of two paitings in “The October Cycle” done on a surface made of tar and feathers. literature people. In turn, my own interest in poetry developed. I wanted to write. To this day, that's still the way I work ... "I found that poetry was a great sounding board for the work "I think you're right. People think the idea of art has so that I was doing, a way that whenever I got stuck visually I much to do with this aspect of the craft, that you be able would go back to poetry. I would mine into language and I to draw pretty, like T h o m a s would come back to work and Kinkade or something, which ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– would be able to work again. is actually so grotesque. T h e ‘What happens is you get this " A l s o , another thing I other side: this almost boundary between the known and discovered over time, was being b o u rgeois idea of this a b l e t o w o r k i n language refinement that is really not the unknown. At that boundary, freed the work from so many refinement. All the life has reason fails and cognition fails. literary associations. The work been taken out of it. Now it Then you need to do this leap didn't have to be narrative. just seems so tidy, and that I was getting my narrative fill, tidiness is grotesque. This is between the known and the if you like, elsewhere. So I can d i fficult to say to the society unknown. There is where art let the work be a fragment at large. The words may be begins. If you begin art anywhere without narrative." easy for them to understand, but what we're talking about, else before this boundary, it is • • • that doesn't make sense." useless.’ –Enrique Martínez Celaya With sketchy images placed in • • • ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– the center of the black canvases, the paintings in "The October "The October Cycle" had its Cycle" intentionally resist origins in the 2001 birth of Martínez Celaya's daughter instant easy viewing. Gabriella and in "Guide," a book he wrote about a The solitary figures are in side profile, their outlined conversation between himself and an imaginary mentor. shapes refusing to give up more than their essential Martínez Celaya says he wrote the book so he would be humanity. There are few details to fill in the story. When they asked questions he thought needed to be asked about his exist, like the frame house in "Seated Figure," they only art and life. enhance a feeling of, for example, onging for the reassurance The answers led him to begin the series of paintings that provided by home. also picked up on some of the ideas from his poem Martínez Celaya m a i n t a i n s that his work is not a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l . " O c t o b e r," which is available on small cards outside the But two of the pivotal pieces in "The October Cycle" are drawn Sheldon gallery doors. directly from his life. "Gabriela (First)"titled after his then-infant daughter, depicts Martínez Celaya, 39, first put brush to canvas when he the sketchily outlined arms of an adult figure tossing a baby was about 8 years old, painting to try to understand what into the air or about to catch the child as it comes down. "The was happening inside and around him as his family trust and risk of that gesture is really the trust and risk of prepared to leave Cuba to join his father in . painting and is really the trust and risk of living," Martínez The feeling of exile has never left him. He compares it Celaya said. "You hope she will come down in your arms and to jumping off a cliff -- a fall that can only be slowed everything will be fine." through his art, a process that continues with "Boatboy," an "Distance," the final painting in the cycle, presages the outline of a paper boat from "The October Cycle." birth early this year of Martínez Celaya's son Sebastían and In 1975, the family moved from Spain to , points to his subsequent series of works. In that image, the where Martínez Celaya apprenticed with an academic two figures become more precise -- a father and his son, p a i n t e r. At the same time, he became interested in physics. with a richly painted, almost pasty column of color in the In the 10th grade, he built a laser that earned him a area between them. National Congress of Science award. Beyond those references, Martínez Celaya has stripped In 1982, he began studying applied physics at Cornell storytelling from the paintings, aiming at something more U n i v e r s i t y. In 1986, he graduated from Cornell and entered essential and universal. the doctorate program in quantum electronics at the If the question "What is The October Cycle' about?" had to University of , Berkeley, spending his summers be answered with a single word, it would be: time. working at Brookhaven National Laboratory. O r, more precisely, how does each individual deal with time? Three years later, he abandoned physics and the MFA a r t The traces and fragments reflect the artist's concern with program in which he was enrolled and began working at a m e m o r y, that what we recall is incomplete, bringing back only laser company, where he patented four inventions on lasers little bits of the past. The reflection of the almost meditative and laser delivery. But he soon decided to earn his living figures touches on the selling his art in San interplay between the Francisco's parks. temporary and the permanent. The images of nature • • • incorporate the passing of the seasons, and the children raise On the idea of art and the idea of the shortness of physics, it seems to me that each life. some of your art is almost Aiming the viewer at rational inquiry as a reflection and contemplation, scientific method. But you're something is clearly spiritual asking questions that are not in Martínez Celaya's paintings. going to have a specific In his illuminating essay in the answer ... there's not going to exhibition's catalog, Siedell be at some point a right identifies it as a search for the a n s w e r. That has to be sacred. But beyond a cruciform interesting for somebody outlined figure beneath a tree who has a scientific mind. Enrique Martínez Celaya talks with University of Nebraska-Lincoln art branch in "Rosemilk," there is graduate student Roxanne Jackson in her Richards Hall studio during his "What you're pointing at is nothing close to religious recent trip to Lincoln. In addition to talking about his work, Martínez Celaya something that is a imagery in the cycle. did studio critiques with a number of UNL art students. fundamental part of my approach to art work. That is, • • • everything you can do with reason and cognition, you should do it that way because it is the most efficient thing. Which leads right to this: I have written down "Can art be What happens is you get to this boundary between the explained?" On some level, the answer is yes. But if it's real known and the unknown. At that boundary, reason fails art, I don't think it can really be explained. and cognition fails. Then you need to do this leap between "I think this is really an interesting question. Some the known and the unknown. There is where art begins. If people, the people who are not very informed, think what you begin art anywhere else before the boundary, it is you mean is that we just stand here like two fools, we useless. ... In art work, you can do this jump unlike cannot say anything about this painting. It's not that. We anything else. (Austrian philosopher Ludwig) Wi t t g e n s t e i n can say a lot of things. We can even sound like we're has this famous line: `That what you cannot speak about, really knowledgeable. But if you listen to what can be you must be silent about.' That's a great bridge from which said, you realize the nugget of what makes the painting art can begin." great is not being talked about." Recently, Martínez Celaya, who earned his MFA in 1994 sometimes you don't. I think when I left the Ph.D. program, and taught at in Claremont, Calif., until that was a huge moment. There are not that many in terms early this year, has moved up a notch or two in the art of my work. The next one was when I tarred and feathered world. In 2001, a retrospective of his work toured several all of my paintings and became interested in the idea of Zen museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art just purchased and how to make a different kind of painting than the one I three of his paintings. A Berlin museum bought an entire was making. I think this is another moment, and this is much installation. There is a waiting list of collectors who want more complicated one because it's more encompassing. one of his pieces. "I've spent the last year and a half trying to figure out That success doesn't come as a shock to Bill Griffin, who where to move. That idea of a move is really a question of has been Martínez Celaya's dealer since 1997. what kind of life do I want to have in relation to my family "There's an inevitability that's there in Martínez Celaya," and my work. As the work is now being acquired by the Griffin said. "That is nothing new. He and I knew it six Metropolitan, the Whitney and things like that and people years ago. It's only becoming clear to others now. We're are wanting the work and there's a waiting list and stuff, I just scratching the surface." see that whole world as increasingly more separated from Modeling his Los Angeles gallery on that of Daniel- my own desires. How do you maintain that vitality? It Henry Kannweiler, the European dealer who handled sounds corny and cliche, but how do you remain honest to Pablo Picasso, Griffin represents only a handful of artists what you're trying to do?" who he believes are doing important work with depth and staying power. Then he promotes their art as something Enrique Martínez Celaya, artist, continues to search for the way. more than expensive decoration for the houses of the rich. That means that Griffin does things like support the publication of catalogs, promote works to museums and encourage Martínez Celaya to give talks and continue to present his ideas and philosophy -- in Griffin's words, "spreading the message not that he's a painter, he's a thinker. " Art world success, however, now means Martínez Celaya is approached by collectors asking which painting in a series is the most "typical," code for the best investment for resale. Having his work at auction is unsettling. More unnerving is the idea of producing work just for the commercial market. "Corruption is always around the corner," Martínez Celaya said. "My point of view is constantly one of active battling. I never feel like I'm above all that. That's why, so far, I feel good to say I haven't sold out. I keep reminders everywhere in my studio... to remember that there are alternatives. Because, after a while in the art world, the higher you move,the more you start to feel there is no other way of doing it than the way all the posers and market manipulators are doing it. You need constant reminders. Otherwise, you'd just get lost." So far, Griffin said, the increased visibility and success and the pressure that accompanies them haven't altered either Martínez Celaya or the quality of his work. "He hasn't changed a bit," Griffin said. "He's like a rock. He's so solid. He's going after his version of history, I think."

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Do you feel like you're at an interesting, pivotal point in your life and career. With your two kids now and your life going that way and your art profile increasing and your art changing? Do you think about that explicitly? "I'm thinking about it more explicitly than ever before. Every life you can look back and say, 'This was a huge turn of events.' Sometimes you realize those are the moments,