Charles Ray (artist)
Encyclopedia
Charles Ray is a Los Angeles
-based sculptor. He is known for his strange and enigmatic sculptures that draw the viewer’s perceptual judgments into question in jarring and unexpected ways. Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times
wrote that Ray’s “career as an artist…is easily among the most important of the last twenty years.”
as the son of Helen and Wade Ray. He has four brothers and a sister. He earned his BFA at the University of Iowa
and his MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts
at Rutgers University.
He studied sculpture at the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History
with Roland Brener
, who exposed Ray to many of developments of Modernist sculpture, in particular the constructivist aesthetic of artists like Anthony Caro
and David Smith
. In an interview, Ray spoke of his artistic education and early influences.
"Caro’s work was like a template; I saw it as almost platonic. The formal rules as taught by Brener were a kind of nourishment for me. The actual working in the studio was, in a sense, the expression. I was taught that the finished sculpture was maybe the end of the paragraph. Once a sculpture was completed it was critiqued and put back on to the scrap pile. This way of working taught me to think sculpturally rather than to think about sculpture. At this time in my life the historical context of high Modernism was really beyond my grasp. I saw Caro as super-contemporary. His work was, and is, so alive. It bridges the gap between the inside and outside of my mind. "
Ray has headed the sculpture department at UCLA since 1981.
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Ray recapitulated many of the developments in twentieth-century sculpture in his first show in 1971 with an installation entitled One-Stop Gallery. The show consisted of a collection of small sculptures, resting directly on floor. Some of the works, in their attention to materials, were clearly inspired by Minimalist artists like Robert Morris
, while two small constructed steel sculptures invoke the traditions taught by his teacher, Brener; they were even painted the same red as Caro’s Early One Morning (1962, Tate Modern
). One-Stop Gallery would anticipate the tone for much of Ray’s work to come in its plumbing and reinterpreting of the canon of twentieth-century sculpture without having his own work appeal to any particular period or style.
Initially influenced by Caro, by including his own body in his works he made them more like documented performances. In the two-part photographic work Plank Piece I–II (1973), for example, he pinned his body to the wall with a large piece of wood.
In the late 1980s, Ray conceived Minimalist
works using ink and wire. In Ink Box (1986), a large cube is filled to the brim with ink, giving the illusion of a solid cube. Ink Line (1987) is a continuous stream of black ink traveling from a dime-size opening in the ceiling into a similar hole in the floor. In Spinning Spot (1987), a section of the floor measuring 24 inches in diameter is set spinning at 33 RPM. Consisting of a single 8.5 foot length of wire, both ends of Moving Wire (1988) protrude from the wall and are set 14 inches apart; as one end of the wire extends out from the wall at random intervals, the other retracts.
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For Unpainted Sculpture (1997), over the course of two years, Ray has reconstructed a life-sized crashed Pontiac Grand Am
(circa 1991) out of fiberglass, casting and assembling each piece to match the bent and twisted forms of the original Despite the work’s misleading title, it is painted a soft dove grey that is reminiscent of the plastic parts of model car kits.
His most work-intensive to date is the ten-year re-creation in Japanese cypress (Hinoki) of a fallen and rotting tree he had found in a meadow. With Hinoki (2007, Art Institute of Chicago), Ray had a mold made of a large rotting tree he found in California. He then hired a team of Japanese woodcarvers in Osaka to essentially re-carve the tree in Hinoki, a different wood than that of the original tree. In a forthcoming interview, Ray made it clear that the purpose of the piece was not to photorealistically carve an exact replica of the tree. “The tree had that beautiful interior that fallen logs have,” he says. “It happens when bugs eat out the hard wood, so you have this hollow thing. All I knew was that I wanted to carve that, I wanted them to have a sense of that interior [of the log] because it’s in there, even if normally it couldn’t be seen. So that was really important. And then I became involved with the outside as well…It mattered to me that somebody had looked at it, and I wanted to make it matter to you.” Hinoki took four years to carve of what was a ten year project: from the initial discovery of the tree in 1997-1998 to its exhibition in 2007.
Ray's critically acclaimed Firetruck (1993), a full-size aluminum, fiberglass and Plexiglas installation, has been exhibited on Madison Avenue in New York, in front of the Whitney Museum of American Art
. The giant replica of a red toy firetruck was also exhibited outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
in 2008.
In 2009, Ray installed Boy with Frog, his first outdoor commissioned work, at the Punta della Dogana, Venice. Grand in size and realized with a smooth white finish that references the important tradition of marble sculpture in Italy, it depicts a boy holding a goliath frog above the Grand Canal. The sculpture calls to mind the Apollo Sauroktonos, an ancient Roman sculpture at the Musée du Louvre in Paris of a nude adolescent reaching out his arm to catch a lizard climbing a tree; and, the Boy with Thorn|Spinario, a bronze statue at the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Capitolini, of a seated Roman boy plucking a thorn from the sole of his foot.
, which then traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
and the Whitney Museum of American Art
. Other solo exhibition venues include the Institute of Contemporary Art
, London; Kunsthalle Bern
, Switzerland; and Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway. He has exhibited at documenta IX
(1992), Venice Biennale
s in 1993 and 2003, and four Whitney Biennial
s.
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
-based sculptor. He is known for his strange and enigmatic sculptures that draw the viewer’s perceptual judgments into question in jarring and unexpected ways. Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
wrote that Ray’s “career as an artist…is easily among the most important of the last twenty years.”
Early life and education
Charles Ray was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
as the son of Helen and Wade Ray. He has four brothers and a sister. He earned his BFA at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
and his MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts
Mason Gross School of the Arts
Mason Gross School of the Arts is the arts conservatory at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is named for Mason W. Gross, the sixteenth president of Rutgers...
at Rutgers University.
University of Iowa School of Art and Art History
The University of Iowa School of Art and Art History is a school of the University of Iowa located in Iowa City, IA which awards undergraduate and graduate degrees in Art and Art history...
with Roland Brener
Roland Brener
Roland Brener was a South African-born Canadian artist.He studied at St Martin's School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, under Anthony Caro and taught at St...
, who exposed Ray to many of developments of Modernist sculpture, in particular the constructivist aesthetic of artists like Anthony Caro
Anthony Caro
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro, OM, CBE is an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects.-Background and early life:...
and David Smith
David Smith (sculptor)
David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...
. In an interview, Ray spoke of his artistic education and early influences.
"Caro’s work was like a template; I saw it as almost platonic. The formal rules as taught by Brener were a kind of nourishment for me. The actual working in the studio was, in a sense, the expression. I was taught that the finished sculpture was maybe the end of the paragraph. Once a sculpture was completed it was critiqued and put back on to the scrap pile. This way of working taught me to think sculpturally rather than to think about sculpture. At this time in my life the historical context of high Modernism was really beyond my grasp. I saw Caro as super-contemporary. His work was, and is, so alive. It bridges the gap between the inside and outside of my mind. "
Ray has headed the sculpture department at UCLA since 1981.
Work
Ray’s work is difficult to classify. Style, materials, subject, presence, and scale are all variable. What is consistent is as critic Anne Wagner put it, “In all his seamlessly executed objects, Ray fixates on how and why things happen, to say nothing of wondering what really does happen in the field of vision, and how such events might be remade as art.” This and the level of art historical awareness behind his works has led many critics to call Ray a sculptor’s sculptor. Nevertheless, his art has managed to find a large audience, thanks in part to its often striking or beguiling nature.Ray recapitulated many of the developments in twentieth-century sculpture in his first show in 1971 with an installation entitled One-Stop Gallery. The show consisted of a collection of small sculptures, resting directly on floor. Some of the works, in their attention to materials, were clearly inspired by Minimalist artists like Robert Morris
Robert Morris (artist)
Robert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd but he has also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement and installation...
, while two small constructed steel sculptures invoke the traditions taught by his teacher, Brener; they were even painted the same red as Caro’s Early One Morning (1962, Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
). One-Stop Gallery would anticipate the tone for much of Ray’s work to come in its plumbing and reinterpreting of the canon of twentieth-century sculpture without having his own work appeal to any particular period or style.
Initially influenced by Caro, by including his own body in his works he made them more like documented performances. In the two-part photographic work Plank Piece I–II (1973), for example, he pinned his body to the wall with a large piece of wood.
In the late 1980s, Ray conceived Minimalist
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
works using ink and wire. In Ink Box (1986), a large cube is filled to the brim with ink, giving the illusion of a solid cube. Ink Line (1987) is a continuous stream of black ink traveling from a dime-size opening in the ceiling into a similar hole in the floor. In Spinning Spot (1987), a section of the floor measuring 24 inches in diameter is set spinning at 33 RPM. Consisting of a single 8.5 foot length of wire, both ends of Moving Wire (1988) protrude from the wall and are set 14 inches apart; as one end of the wire extends out from the wall at random intervals, the other retracts.
Pontiac Grand Am
The original Grand Am was introduced in the fall of 1972 as a 1973 model. It was based on the GM A platform along with other cars such as the Pontiac LeMans, Pontiac GTO, Chevrolet Chevelle, Buick Century, and the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme...
(circa 1991) out of fiberglass, casting and assembling each piece to match the bent and twisted forms of the original Despite the work’s misleading title, it is painted a soft dove grey that is reminiscent of the plastic parts of model car kits.
Ray's critically acclaimed Firetruck (1993), a full-size aluminum, fiberglass and Plexiglas installation, has been exhibited on Madison Avenue in New York, in front of the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
. The giant replica of a red toy firetruck was also exhibited outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
in 2008.
In 2009, Ray installed Boy with Frog, his first outdoor commissioned work, at the Punta della Dogana, Venice. Grand in size and realized with a smooth white finish that references the important tradition of marble sculpture in Italy, it depicts a boy holding a goliath frog above the Grand Canal. The sculpture calls to mind the Apollo Sauroktonos, an ancient Roman sculpture at the Musée du Louvre in Paris of a nude adolescent reaching out his arm to catch a lizard climbing a tree; and, the Boy with Thorn|Spinario, a bronze statue at the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Capitolini, of a seated Roman boy plucking a thorn from the sole of his foot.
Exhibitions
Charles Ray had his first one-person museum exhibition in 1989. His art has since been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and North America, including a traveling, mid-career retrospective organized by Paul Schimmel for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los AngelesMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
, which then traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
and the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
. Other solo exhibition venues include the Institute of Contemporary Art
Institute of Contemporary Art
The Institute of Contemporary Art is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The museum was founded in 1936 with a mission to exhibit contemporary art.-Mission:...
, London; Kunsthalle Bern
Kunsthalle Bern
The Kunsthalle Bern is a Kunsthalle on the Helvetiaplatz in Berne, Switzerland.It was built in 1917–1918 by the Kunsthalle Bern Association and opened on October 5, 1918. Since then, it has been the site of numerous expositions of contemporary art...
, Switzerland; and Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway. He has exhibited at documenta IX
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
(1992), Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
s in 1993 and 2003, and four Whitney Biennial
Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...
s.
Major works
- Ink Box, 1986, Orange County Museum of ArtOrange County Museum of ArtThe Orange County Museum of Art is a museum located in Newport Beach, California.The museum's collection comprises more than 3,000 objects, with a concentration on the art of California from the early 20th century to present...
- How a Table Works, 1986, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- Fall ’91, 1992, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley..., 1992, Private Collection
- Family Romance, 1993, Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern ArtThe Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York - Unpainted Sculpture, 1997, Walker Art CenterWalker Art CenterThe Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis - Hinoki, 2007, Art Institute of ChicagoArt Institute of ChicagoThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
- Boy with Frog, 2009, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy
Books on Charles Ray
- Ray, Charles. Charles Ray. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998.
- Ray, Charles. Charles Ray. Malmö: Rooseum – Center for Contemporary Art, 1994.
Articles on Charles Ray
- “Art in Review.” New York Times, November 30, 2007, sec. E
- Hainley, Bruce. “Charles Ray at Regen Projects.” Artforum, January 1998, 91.
- Knight, Christopher. “Charles Ray’s Hinoki: A Wooden Record of Life.” Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2007.
- Relyea, Lane. “Charles Ray: In the No.” Artforum, September 1992, 62-66.
- Rutledge, Virginia. “Ray’s Reality Hybrids.” Art in America, November 1998, 96-100, 142-143.
- Wagner, Anne. “Review of ‘Charles Ray’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.” Artforum, May 1999, 171-172.
Interviews with Charles Ray
- Bonami, Francesco. “Charles Ray: A Telephone Conversation.” Flash Art, Summer 1992, 98-100.
- Fried, Michael. “Early one Morning…” Tate Etc., Spring 2005, 50-53.
- Storr, Robert. “Anxious Spaces.” Art in America, November 1998, 101-105, 143-144.
Writings by Charles Ray
- Ray, Charles. “Thinking of Sculpture as Shaped by Space.” New York Times, October 7, 2001, 34.
- __________. A Four Dimensional Being Writes Poetry on a Field with Sculptures. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 2006.
- __________. “1000 Words: Charles Ray Talks about Hinoki, 2007.” Artforum, September 2007, 4.