Along with artists such as Robert Gober and Katharina Fritsch, Charles Ray has salvaged the tradition of crafted, figurative sculpture by radically reconstituting the three-dimensional object as “image.” Ray’s tact has been to conflate a perception-oriented strain of Minimalism with elements of Pop, then to temper this strange alloy with his own unique version of object-relations psychology. Organized by MoCA chief curator Paul Schimmel, this midcareer retrospective of Ray’s quirky oeuvre should allow the logic of the artist’s development to unfold, offering a definitive look at the new, peculiarly hybrid genre of sculpture-as-image. June 4–Nov. 19; travels to Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Nov.–Feb. 1999; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Mar.–June 1999.
