L.A. Louver to Present New Enrique Martínez Celaya Exhibition

L.A. Louver will present a solo exhibition of new works by Enrique Martínez Celaya. This is the artist's fourth show with L.A. Louver. The exhibition, titled "Lone Star", will be on view from April 9 to May 6, 2015 at L.A. Louver located at 45 North Venice Boulevard. There will be an opening reception for the artist from 7-9 PM on Thursday, April 9 at the gallery.

The beginning and end points of the exhibition experience are marked by two installations. In the first floor south gallery, a bronze sculpture of a young boy stands in a pool of water; tiled mirrors cover the surrounding walls. Facing away from the viewer, the figure's fragmented reflection reveals tears that trickle from the boy's eyes into the pool below. The visitor is also implicated in the scene through her reflection; a single light illuminates the space; the sound of the tears dropping into the pool creates a multi-sensorial immersive experience. The second installation, in the gallery's open-air Skyroom, features the same boy who now stands within a mesh wire cage shaped like a house. Holes in the figure's chest serves as a refuge for five live birds that live within the cage.

Paintings and sculptures, presented throughout the first and second floor galleries, navigate between these two installations, and according to Martínez Celaya, "point to a world that is familiar and unknown, radiant and brutal, personal and vast." The trajectory of the narrative imbued within the collective whole is mysterious and haunting. Imagery provides the context by which the narrative unfolds -- sunlight, birds, glass and water manifest wonderment, while skates and rays, cages, fire, bridges and the evocation of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's childhood home provoke darker connotations.

Through this entire experience, infused with themes of innocence, loss, hope, possibility and dreams, the artist attempts to stir the conscious and subconscious understanding of becoming. "I do not think of this body of work as an assembly of individual artworks and writings," states Martínez Celaya. "Instead, I approach it as a totality or as an environment where one artwork is revealed or hidden by another. Throughout this environment the friction between images and their negation suggests the instability of recognition. This instability and the layering of ideas bring about circuitous discoveries as well as reflective or indirect recognitions, often the only kind of recognition available to us."