MEANING AND PERCEPTION. ENRIQUE MARTÍNEZ CELAYA ON FREDERIC SNITZER
White: A Telling Shroud, Recent Paintings 2019-2023 is Enrique Martínez Celaya’s fourth exhibition at Frederic Snitzer Gallery.
White: A Telling Shroud brings together a selection of recent paintings by Martínez Celaya where the color white plays a significant role. While seemingly formalist in relation to the artist’s oeuvre, the seven paintings in the exhibition represent an exploration of meaning and perception resonating with philosophical and poetic inquiries that have long been a concern for the artist. The exhibition's title suggests an engagement with disciplines beyond the art world, as well as the role of white as something that dually conceals and reveals.
The seven paintings selected for the exhibition share a central, figurative element – a girl, a lion, an airplane, a bird – yet the concentration on a singular color, particularly one often associated with absence or neutrality, aims to explore important aspects of Martínez Celaya’s work beyond narrative. The use of white conjures an uncanny feeling of dislocation that disrupts the otherwise familiar imagery of the represented world, allowing for new possibilities of understanding while evoking ideas of ghostliness, liminality, detachment, otherworldliness, memory, or the unknowable. Yet, unlike the work of the Surrealists, Martínez Celaya’s paintings remain aware of their materiality, pointing to the artist’s continued philosophical concern with balancing reference and presence in a work of art.
Writing, an essential aspect of Martínez Celaya’s practice, figures prominently throughout the exhibition. Some paintings include text annotations, suggestive of fragments of poetry that introduce an additional layer of meaning, while one painting’s title refers to the poem “The White Birds” by Yeats. As Martínez Celaya states, his use of white also relates to Melville’s fascination in Moby-Dick, “where the color is not just a feature of the whale but a central character in its own right—a carrier of philosophy, fear, beauty, and the divine.” White: A Telling Shroud brings together recent paintings that consider Martínez Celaya’s work through an unexpectedly formal lens that examines the philosophical and poetic ambitions of the artist’s work and invites the viewer to reevaluate what is perceived and overlooked in the pursuit of meaning.
White: A Telling Shroud. Individual Exhibition by Enrique Martínez Celaya.
Until January 20th, 2024.
Frederic Snitzer. 1540 NE Miami Court. Miami, United States.
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