Martínez Celaya
SEA SKY LAND:
towards a map of everything
On view February2-April 9, 2022
USC Fisher Museum of Art presents Enrique Martínez Celaya, SEA SKY LAND: towards a map of everything. SEA SKY LAND brings together approximately 30 large-format paintings and sculptures created by the artist between 2005 and 2020. While Martínez Celaya has had numerous museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide over the last two decades, this is the first time the arc of his practice will be revealed in a Southern California museum since 2001.
Martínez Celaya’s philosophical and poetic probing in writings plays an integral part in his artistic practice. Together these works suggest a map of sorts, and this artistic, poetic, and intellectual mapping reveals a territory shaped by self, time, memory, meaning, myth, ideations of home, and the world as it is. Each of the three galleries at the Fisher Museum will present the artist’s writings alongside paintings and sculptures dedicated to one of three motifs—sea, sky, and land.
“Primavera” (Spring), 2007. Oil and wax on canvas, 116 x 150 in. Private collection, Topanga Canyon, California. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, California. 
“The Acknowledgment”, 2015. Oil and wax on canvas, 92 x 118 in. Martínez Celaya Family Collection, Los Angeles. 
“The Hunter”, 2016. Oil and wax on canvas, 92 x 118 in. Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami. 
“The Crown”, 2015. Oil and wax on canvas, 100 x 78 in. Collection of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California. 
“The Well”, 2014. Bronze, 152 x 65 x 59 in. Collection of the USC Fisher Museum of Art. Gift of Mei-Lee Ney.
Concurrent with SEA SKY LAND, an exhibition of Martínez Celaya’s work related to the early 20th-century California poet Robinson Jeffers will be on view in the Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library at USC, along with historical material by the poet. The exhibition draws from Martínez Celaya’s recent residency at the Robinson Jeffers Tor House in Carmel, California, where he was invited to be the foundation’s first Fellow. An expanded version of the Doheny Library exhibition will travel to the Monterey Museum of Art in May 2022.
Also concurrent with SEA SKY LAND is Martínez Celaya’s immersive, site-specific installation, There-bound, on view at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, where he is the institution’s first Visual Arts Fellow. There-bound will be on view at The Huntington through November 2022.
Enrique Martínez Celaya is an artist, author, and former scientist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions worldwide. He has realized major exhibitions, projects, interventions, and social and intellectual interactions not confined to museums and galleries, including the Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York; the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; and the Strandverket Konsthall, Marstrand Sweden, among many others. His work is held in over 50 public collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford.
Martínez Celaya holds the position of Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California. He is a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, a Fellow of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, a Fellow of Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and a Fellow of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation.