Title: Charles Ray
Date: Friday, Sept. 26, 2025 at 11am
Location: 36 Edgewood Ave., Room 204
Additional Details: This event is open to School of Art community members only.
Charles Ray (1953) is an American sculptor known for his strange and enigmatic sculptures that draw the viewer's perceptual judgments into question in jarring and unexpected ways. In 2007, 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."
Charles Ray
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This career-spanning publication features conceptual, political, formal, and technical perspectives on the work of contemporary sculptor Charles Ray For Charles Ray (born 1953), sculpture is a way of thinking that informs his work across a wide range of media--from gelatin silver prints to porcelain, fiberglass, wood, and steel. Charles Ray: Figure Ground spans the whole of the artist's fifty-year career, from his early photographs and performances through his intriguing, often unsettling sculptures, some of which are published here for the first time. The essays foreground Ray's engagement with preexisting traditions, as well as charged issues around race, gender, and sexuality (notably expressed through his explorations of Mark Twain's 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and investigate the modalities of touch that run through his work. In addition, a reflection by Ray himself and a conversation between the artist and Hal Foster offer further insights into his multifaceted practice. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (January 31-June 5, 2022)
Charles Ray
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Ever since the early 1970s, sculptor Charles Ray's protean practice has yielded some of the most memorable objects and experiences in contemporary art, causing us to confront, as Peter Schjeldahl has written, "elegant, deadpan fabrications that flip wild switches in our minds." In 1987's "Ink Line," for example, he sent a single stream of ink flowing to the middle of a gallery's floor in a slender column; outside the 1993 Whitney Biennial he parked a massive replica of a toy fire engine. His recent work is just as alluring and unsettling: a steel sculpture of a handheld bird, a poster of an ominous pumpkin, an intricate cast aluminum sculpture of a tractor. Charles Ray surveys the work the artist has made in the past dozen years; an interview by Michael Fried and an essay by John Kelsey complement texts written about each work by Ray himself.
Charles Ray
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Between Minimalism and craft: a comprehensive appraisal of Los Angeles sculptor Charles Ray This catalog accompanies the 2022 double exhibition of Charles Ray's work at the Centre Pompidou and the Bourse de Commerce (Pinault Foundation). With approximately 30 pieces that depict humans, plants and vehicles in his favored materials of wood and metal, this publication explores the artist's critical relationship with Minimalism and the uncompromising perfectionism apparent in his work. Whether recreating fallen trees down to every nook and cranny or conjuring a certain vulnerability in his life-size steel figures, Ray's pieces are characterized by a formal intricacy that lends an almost uncanny realism to his sculptures in spite of their sometimes unusual scale. In his meticulous attention to detail, Ray invites viewers to examine his sculptures with similar intensity. Ray's work, which clearly draws from a minimalist-formalist focus on material as it explores the possibilities of three-dimensional representation, resists classification and must be experienced on an individual level. Based in Los Angeles, American artist Charles Ray (born 1953) has worked for decades across mediums and materials to create photography series, performance pieces and sculptures. Ray has been the subject of solo exhibitions around the world, and his work has been featured in Venice Biennales in 1993, 2003 and 2014, and in five Whitney Biennials. He is currently represented by Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.
Charles Ray
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In his sculptural practice, American artist Charles Ray (born 1953) has long been fascinated by the concept of representation, the depiction of the human form and questions of scale. Known for his keen sense of--and respect for--the uncanny, Ray has carved a widely admired path that crisscrosses the arenas of minimalism and conceptual art, while continually pushing the boundaries of visual perception. This book marks the long-term exhibition of works at Glenstone Museum selected by the artist, including Baled Truck (2013), a sculpture made of solid machined stainless steel, emblematic of the artist's meticulous fabrication process. It also includes a conversation with--and text by--the artist and installation photography.
Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1997-2014
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How does one make sense of a purported link between mathematics, Shakespeare, and art? The answer lies within the oeuvre of Man Ray (1890-1976). The publication sets out to unravel the Surrealist puzzle. Commencing with his photographs of mathematical models he encountered at the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris in the thirties, it charts a path culminating in his Shakespearean Equations (1949) series of oil paintings, which were inspired by the photographs and painted in Hollywood over a decade later. The arc the images strike from painting back to photography reveals the ease with which Ray moved between various disciplines and forged his own path. An inveterate experimenter, he pioneered artistic activities in the realms of painting, object making, film, and photography, challenging conventional boundaries and blurring established aesthetic categories.
Charles Ray: Volume III
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The third installment commemorating Charles Ray's rotating exhibitions at Glenstone The diverse sculptural practice of American sculptor Charles Ray (born 1953) has long challenged perceptions of scale, material and subject matter, necessitating multiple viewings over time. Charles Ray: Volume III is part of an ongoing series of publications commemorating rotating exhibitions of the artist's work at Glenstone Museum, the third of which opened in the winter of 2021. Organized in close collaboration with the artist, the selections showcase Ray's practice from early in his career to the present day, with four works ranging in material from concrete and steel to handmade paper used to realize a recent self-portrait, Return to the one (2020). This catalog includes documentation of the exhibition at Glenstone, an original essay by the artist, a contribution from art historian Anna Lovatt and an introduction by Emily Rales, cofounder and director of Glenstone Museum.
Charles Ray (American, born 1953), and Artist. The New Beetle. 2006. Painted stainless steel, 25 1/2 x 20 3/4 x 43 1/2 in. (64.77 x 52.705 x 110.49 cm). Dallas Museum of Art; http://www.dma.org/. https://jstor.org/stable/community.14992912.
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