Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1997-2014

Charles Ray (born 1953) is one of America’s most outstanding contemporary sculptors. Like Jeff Koons and Katharina Fritsch, he has developed a new kind of plastic figuration, as can be seen in his white-painted steel sculpture “Boy with Frog” (2009), whose recent installation on the Punta della Dogana in Venice drew a great deal of critical and popular attention. Despite its apparent naturalism, Ray’s oversized figure of a nude boy frolicking animatedly, even rabidly, with the animal world, verges upon the classical. “Horse and Rider,” a self-portrait of the artist on horseback (2014), likewise revives the traditional images of the horseback rider and the hero of the American West, but in a way that is decidedly anti-heroic. This volume offers a comprehensive monograph on Ray’s sculptural works of recent years.