Charles Ray 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- , 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 , 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.
Charles Ray 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- , 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 , 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.