{"data":{"id":"3652","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":3652,"topgoose_id":850,"tms_id":3652,"display_name":"Charles Ray","sort_name":"Ray Charles","display_date":"1953–","begin_date":"1953","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eSince the early 1970s, Charles Ray’s\nstylistically varied body of sculptures,\nphotographs, films, and performances has\nchallenged viewers’ expectations of\nartworks and destabilized their perceptions\nof visual and physical phenomena.\nThe Los Angeles–based artist makes use\nof humor, provocative subject matter,\nand surprising distortions of scale, and\nfrequently involves the human body\nas a central element in his work. He began\nusing himself as a subject in projects\nwhile still a student, as in a sculpture\nfrom 1973 in which he pinned his own body\nto a gallery wall with a large wooden\nplank; in a 1978 performance, he hung\nfrom a tree limb.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRay’s sculptures of people and\nobjects often employ significant\nmanipulations of scale to confound art-\nhistorical traditions as well as social norms,\nat times sending up stereotypes of middle-\nclass American life. Encountering \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/8279\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBoy\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, for\nexample, one is startled by the sculpture’s\nsize: uncannily realistic, it looks like\nan ordinary department-store mannequin,\nbut the child is as tall as a grown male\n(in fact, he is exactly Ray’s height). The boy’s\nadult stance and gesture—reminiscent\nof a politician or an orator—are incompatible\nwith his youthful visage, knee socks, and\nshort pants, further intensifying the effect\nof disorientation. At once prepubescent\nand adult, familiar and enigmatic, innocent\nand perverse, \u003cem\u003eBoy\u003c/em\u003e unsettles our sense\nof space and subjectivity. “You start reading\nthe narrative, reading the story,” Ray has\nexplained about his conception of a viewer’s\ninteraction with one of his sculptures.\n“You know what your relationship is to it,\neven if you don’t understand it.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500118700","wikidata_id":"Q872846","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:55:26.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-27T07:02:53.905-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/3652/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/3652/exhibitions"}}}}