LOS ANGELES, CA.- Matthew Marks announces Charles Ray: two ghosts, the next exhibition in his galleries at 1062 North Orange Grove and 7818 Santa Monica Boulevard. The exhibition includes two new sculptures and more than twenty works on paper.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is Rays first work in stone, Two Horses (2019), carved from a single block of Virginia granite. The sculpture is ten feet tall and fourteen feet wide and weighs more than six tons.
Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog (2018) is a hypothetical scene from the hills around Rays home in Los Angeles. Each animal has been machined from a solid block of aluminum, producing a reflective surface that enhances the finely sculpted details on their bodies.
On view in the gallery at 7818 Santa Monica Boulevard is a selection of Rays recent drawings, the first such presentation since the 2010 Whitney Biennial in New York. These pictures of flowers, drawn in ink on paper, have an immediacy in direct contrast to the sculptures, although one drawing, at seven feet tall, shares the sculptures monumental scale. The paper for some of these works was hand-made by the artist, including several sheets with embossed imagery. Also on display are four scroll-like notebooks, each about eight feet long, that were hand-bound by Ray in his studio.
Charles Ray (born 1953) lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has been featured in Documenta (1992), the Venice Biennale (1993, 2003, 2013), and the Whitney Biennial (1989, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2010), and his sculptures have been the subject of two retrospectives. The first was organized in 1998 by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The second was held at the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Art Institute of Chicago in 201415. The exhibition Charles Ray: four patterns is currently on view at the Reina Sofía in Madrid from March 28 to September 8.