On technical and formal levels, Charles Ray (*1953) has been redefining the possibilities of contemporary sculptural practice since the early 1980s. His recent pioneering use of solid, machined aluminum and stainless steel is entirely new to the history of art, its reflective qualities and fluid effects belying the tremendous weight of many of Ray’s life-size and over-life-size works.

As the catalogue demonstrates, Ray’s latest sculptures evidence a verisimilitude that can range in a single work from painstakingly exact to a softer, more stylized rendering. The works, materially and conceptually dense, often emerge from a long process of study, experimentation, refinement, and meticulous execution.