Enrique Mart Nez Celaya

In the summer of 2013, SITE Sante Fe presents a new project by Enrique Martínez Celaya (born 1964) entitled The Pearl. For this exhibition, Martínez Celaya transforms all 15,000 square feet of SITE's gallery space into an immersive installation environment that includes several large and small-scale paintings, sculptures, video, waterworks and olfactory interventions. This exhibition integrates many of the elements and ideas that the artist has engaged with over the last several years. For this project, the artist takes the notion of home as both a point of departure and a destination to craft a multisensory experience that is an extended metaphor for a journey of emotional and psychological reflection. Visitors experience the installation in a specific sequence that allows a multilevel narrative to unfold coherently. This volume records the conception of the work with drawings and studio photos, as well as installation images of the final work.

"Enrique Martinez Celaya's aesthetic project revives and reinterprets the classic Western metaphysical tradition relating aesthetics to ethics, the Beautiful to the Good and the True. His work embodies his belief that being a certain kind of artist means being a certain kind of person and that in and through art he gains clarity about himself and his relationship to the world. His project is thus profoundly ethical and, in important ways, spiritual. Through art Martinez Celaya reconciles himself to the world as he reconciles his past with his present and projects his future. This volume also participates in the process of reconciliation and projection by interpreting his work through the series, cycles, and projects, which include painting, sculpture, photographs, poetry, and prose that have defined it since the mid-1990s. Curator of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Daniel A. Siedell, has worked with Martinez Celaya on several projects and offers a radical commentary on his work, arguing that Martinez Celaya's ambitious aesthetic project is best understood as an embodiment of a religious Weltanschauung and as a search for that most elusive of religious virtues: hope. The complex cohesion of Martinez Celaya's work is further explored by other writers, who by placing it in different contexts reveal their own distinctive engagement with it. Art critic Thomas McEvilley, a philologist who writes about art, philosophy, and religion, explores how Martinez Celaya has combined Germanic feeling with a surrealist plastic vocabulary to "present a world." Literary critic and Paul Celan scholar John Felstiner traces the contours of an aesthetic lineage that includes Goya, Eliot, Celan, and Beethoven. Former Washington Post journalist and Hollywood producer and writer Christian Williams adopts the conventional artist's chronology to craft a powerful account of Martinez Celaya's life, which has become intimately entwined with his own."--Publisher's website.

This collection, spanning nearly a decade of artistic activity, features selections of writings that trace the intellectual influences and track the development of one of the more formidable and productive minds in the contemporary art world. The writings comprise Enrique Martínez Celaya’s public lectures; essays; interviews; correspondence with artists, critics, and scholars; artist statements; blog posts; and journal entries. These texts were written during Martínez Celaya’s appointment as Visiting Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska; Roth Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College; and, most recently, as the first Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California. Marked by Martínez Celaya’s encyclopedic curiosity and considerable knowledge about the world, these writings and interviews explore the role of art in life, evaluate texts by other modern and contemporary artists and thinkers, and reveal the artist’s deep engagement with artistic, philosophical, and literary lines of inquiry.

In On Art and Mindfulness, world-renowned artist and celebrated teacher Enrique Martínez Celaya shares his views and advice on the art-making process, the development of a practice, the management of obstacles, and the day-to-day choices we must make in order to remain creative and honest. Drawn from sold-out workshops that Martínez Celaya taught over nine years at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado, On Art and Mindfulness serves as a practical guide for artists as well as anyone who wishes to live a mindful, productive life.

Whether as a reaction to our technological present or as a manifestation of fears concerning our environmental future, depictions of the natural world in painting have never seemed more pertinent or urgent. Some of the most ambitious, crucial and intellectually vibrant paintings being created in this century involve the landscape - from a more traditional, perceptual based approach for rendering vistas to a looser, topography-inspired gestural abstraction that blurs the line between form and space, to many other modes in between. Surprisingly, there has not been an ambitious and wide-reaching publication on the subject - until now. The result of several years' worth of research, Landscape Painting Now is the first book to explore the very best contemporary landscape painting. Featuring artists from nearly twenty-five countries born over seven decades, it includes some of the brightest stars of the contemporary art world. It is introduced by an essay from Barry Schwabsky, who discusses the history of landscape painting, exploring how the genre developed through the 20th century to today, and how it has become increasingly relevant to art now. He also explores the notion of what is actually called a landscape painting today, and looks to expand beyond commonly held preconceptions concerning the genre.

The artist Enrique Martínez Celaya and the collectors Gudrun and Martin Fritsch have the same passion for many years: their enthusiasm for German artist Käthe Kollwitz and the examination of her work. While the Berlin-based collectors have built a significant private Kollwitz collection, the artist has referenced his 100-year-older predecessor in many of his own works. Perhaps this is why there are telling parallels between the artistic practices of Martínez Celaya and Kollwitz. Both explore the correlation of drawing and sculpture, and both articulate a deeply felt humanism. For this exhibition at Galerie Judin, Enrique Martínez Celaya has created a group of works that capture the essence of his exploration of Käthe Kollwitz, shown here in a fascinating dialogue with works from the Fritsch Collection. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ CELAYA (*1964) was born in Cuba, grew up in Spain and Puerto Rico, and studied physics and painting in the United States. He is a painter, sculptor, and writer living in Los Angeles, California. His work is represented in exhibitions and collections of important institutions worldwide. KÄTHE KOLLWITZ (1867-1945) studied in Berlin and Munich and became Germany's first female art professor. Her work in drawing, printmaking, and sculpture made her one of the most significant German artists of the last century.

An art historian develops a theological, philosophical, and historical framework within which to experience and interpret modern and contemporary art that is in dialogue with the Christian faith.

This collection, spanning nearly a decade of artistic activity, features selections of writings that trace the intellectual influences and track the development of one of the more formidable and productive minds in the contemporary art world. The writings comprise Enrique Martínez Celaya's public lectures; essays; interviews; correspondence with artists, critics, and scholars; artist statements; blog posts; and journal entries. These texts were written during Martínez Celaya's appointment as Visiting Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska; Roth Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College; and, most recently, as the first Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California. Marked by Martínez Celaya's encyclopedic curiosity and considerable knowledge about the world, these writings and interviews explore the role of art in life, evaluate texts by other modern and contemporary artists and thinkers, and reveal the artist's deep engagement with artistic, philosophical, and literary lines of inquiry.