Charles Ray @ Centre Pompidou

Charles Ray, Self-Portrait, 1990

Ray entertains the similarities and differences between mannequins and sculpture. His sculptures are mannequins, but they take poses that are one step removed from familiar classical sculptures. For example, a boy crouched down to pick something from the ball of his foot reminds us of the Hellenistic sculpture of a boy removing a thorn from the same. Boy with Frog 2009 stands in the pose of a classical sculpture, even though it is clearly a contemporary image of a typical boy with his catch. However, unlike its function in centuries past, for Ray, sculpture is a form of advertising, and a clothes horse for naked bodies. But it is also about the mannequin as a double, the mannequin as art work, as a performance of the social, cultural sexual relations that we actually live. 

Charles Ray, Fall '91, 1992

All of Ray's figures are the wrong size. That is, they are over or undersized, asking us to look up to or down on the figures. Thus, our relationship to his sculptures is quite different from what we expect. In a work such as Fall '91, an oversized mannequin changes her size, depending on where we stand as we look. From afar, she looks like a mannequin of human size, but up close, she is a giant. Unless, of course, we see someone standing next to her when we are at a distance, then we know how big she really is. This is deception of size has been a characteristic of sculpture for centuries. Michelangelo's David was made for a pedestal in a public square, therefore, from below. Accordingly, his figure is distorted so that when we look up at him, the figure is perfectly human-sized and proportioned. 

Charles Ray, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 2021

Much of the work seems to be about generations, about the relations between children and parents. The sculpture of his mother in the pose with a slight twist on that of Manet's Olympia is sees an oversized woman masturbating. Mothers are clearly a big influence on Ray. It's difficult not to see the large and the small figures as playing on the power relations in families.  When the children are the same size as the parents, surely Ray is not creating bridges between generations, but giving a very immediate sense of how one generation is threatening and overwhelming another. Alternatively, we may see the sculptures of things and people as proportioned according to the size that they take up in our minds. 

Charles Ray, Family Romance, 1993

Ray also has a fascination for fabrics. But like the sizes of his sculptures, the material in which they are made is always off. The small person bending down to tie his shoe lace (reminding us of the boy taking the splinter out of his foot) is fabricated in stainless steel. The sensuousness of classical sculptures in marble and bronze are transferred to the industrially produced steel. Similarly, there is always an emphasis on the plasticity and construction of the body as a performative vessel - even when it is in a photograph of Ray himself. Even when he uses real hair, the figure looks plastic, or fabricated. This, of course, makes them completely different from the realist figures of a sculptor such as Ron Muecke - in fact, Ray's are the exact opposite. The figures are clearly representations, without empathy, without any hold on the viewer's emotions. Again, even in the self-portrait photographs, Ray looks like a mannequin of himself,. 

Charles Ray, No, 1992