Scenes of human frailty and global precarity from a famed physicist-turned-painter
Internationally celebrated as a painter, author, professor, scientist and publisher, Cuban-born, Los Angeles-based artist Enrique Martínez Celaya (born 1964) makes somber, sometimes surreal images of the natural world, which probe at metaphysical and existential questions. A trained physicist, Martínez Celaya turned to art as a more affirmative way of making sense of the world. His paintings depict colorful birds or brightly painted young people encircled by the gloomy black of night or just before sunset, while his sculptures transpose the mood of his paintings using unconventional materials such as tar, dirt and charred wood.
Sea, Sky, Land: Towards a Map of Everything
brings together a selection of these paintings and sculptures from 2005 to the present.