Charles Ray
1953–

Since the early 1970s, Charles Ray’s stylistically varied body of sculptures, photographs, films, and performances has challenged viewers’ expectations of artworks and destabilized their perceptions of visual and physical phenomena. The Los Angeles–based artist makes use of humor, provocative subject matter, and surprising distortions of scale, and frequently involves the human body as a central element in his work. He began using himself as a subject in projects while still a student, as in a sculpture from 1973 in which he pinned his own body to a gallery wall with a large wooden plank; in a 1978 performance, he hung from a tree limb.

Ray’s sculptures of people and objects often employ significant manipulations of scale to confound art- historical traditions as well as social norms, at times sending up stereotypes of middle- class American life. Encountering Boy, for example, one is startled by the sculpture’s size: uncannily realistic, it looks like an ordinary department-store mannequin, but the child is as tall as a grown male (in fact, he is exactly Ray’s height). The boy’s adult stance and gesture—reminiscent of a politician or an orator—are incompatible with his youthful visage, knee socks, and short pants, further intensifying the effect of disorientation. At once prepubescent and adult, familiar and enigmatic, innocent and perverse, Boy unsettles our sense of space and subjectivity. “You start reading the narrative, reading the story,” Ray has explained about his conception of a viewer’s interaction with one of his sculptures. “You know what your relationship is to it, even if you don’t understand it.”

Wikipedia entry

Introduction

Charles Ray (born 1953) is a Los Angeles–based American sculptor. He is 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."

Wikidata identifier

Q872846

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Getty record

Introduction

Ray interjects feelings of unrest into his seemingly quiet Minimalist work, substances such as ink or Pepto-Bismol, which if touched by the viewer, disturb the piece. Ray is also known for his unsually large works, for example, his monochrome replica of a crashed car, his big toy firetruck, and his 8-foot woman mannequin. American architect, New York City.

Country of birth

United States

Roles

Artist, architect, conceptual artist, performance artist, photographer, professor, sculptor

ULAN identifier

500118700

Names

Charles Ray, Ray Charles

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Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed January 4, 2025.

Not on view

First acquired
1992

API
artists/3652