Enrique Martínez Celaya, “A wasted journey, a half-finished blaze”

Umeå, 2.2–7.3  2014

The exhibition “A Wasted Journey, A Half-Finished Blaze” showcases five new paintings and an impressive sculptural installation that fills the gallery in Umedalen. The main sculpture in this environment presents a bronze boy encrusted with large jewels crying onto a bed of pine needles. His tears carve a channel through the beds as they cascade from one bed to the next. When they reach the last bed, the merger stream falls on a stack of dishes and pots reminiscent of what one might find in the sink of any house. The stream of tears never stops. Martínez presents a metaphorical, mystical world which resists a narrative and is elusive and open to one’s own interpretation.

Martínez Celaya’s work uses everyday imagery heavy with symbolism, such as the solitary human figure in the landscape, the beds, animals and trees, often in an environment covered with white snow. This exhibition continues the artist´s exploration of the ideas he has been pursuing in the last decade: memory, suffering, longing for radiance, loneliness, and the possibility of art to be relevant to life.