Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1997-2014 Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Bernhard Mendes Bürgi, Douglas Druik, Michael Fried, Richard Neer, Charles Ray, James Rondeau, Anne Wagner. 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.
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