Enrique Martnez Celaya: The October Cycle, 2000-2002

There are signs everywhere that the contemporary art world is growing weary of its theoretical excesses. A number of recent exhibitions focusing on beauty, spirituality, and transcendence seem to demonstrate that, if nothing else, the art world is uncomfortable with its collective unbelief. There seems to be an increased desire to recover art's capacity to be more than ironic, to use art for more than pointing to ideologies or illustrating politics. Artists are taking a leap of faith in making artworks that stimulate our imaginations and bring us into contact with the sacred. Enrique Martinez Celaya's recent paintings are testimony to this rediscovery of art's ability to manifest aesthetic and spiritual presence. Created during an intense three-year period, these large-scale densely painted black canvases make an aesthetic covenant with the viewer that smelly oils and sticky tar on rough canvas can tell us something about the artist, the world, and even ourselves.

Daniel A. Siedell is curator of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. An alumnus of the University of Nebraska (1989), he received an M.A. in art history, criticism, and theory from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a Ph.D. from the University of lowa. He has published articles on art criticism in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Art Criticism, and Books and Culture.