The first large-scale, traveling exhibition of this LA-based artist’s work, Charles Ray charted each significant phase of the conceptual artist’s varied practice from the mid-1970s to the time of the show. The mid-career survey began by highlighting Ray’s participatory sculptures of the 1970s, in which he used his own body to complete simple, post-minimalist tableaux. In the mid-1980s, he created his first table sculpture, examining various dimensions of the table as a visual idiom; around the same time, he made several cube-shaped structures, including Ink Box (1968), a deceptively solid-appearing black box imperceptibly filled to the brim with black ink. In 1990, Ray broke from abstraction to create his uncanny Self-Portrait, a Sears & Roebuck mannequin modified to generally resemble himself. The unsettling figurative motif recurs in Fall ’91 (1991) and Family Romance (1993), two major works from this period. In the mid-1990s, Ray began exploring photography and film alongside his work in sculpture, frequently returning to the symbol of the bottle; his latest work in the exhibition was Unpainted Sculpture (1997), of a reconstructed car wreck.
Charles Ray traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.