
Boston
Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork
Institute of Contemporary Art
July 16–October 17, 2010
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
September 18, 2010–February 13, 2011
Curated by Randi Hopkins
New York–based Charles LeDray is a self-taught artist whose practice defies the category’s savant stereotype. Yes, he uses traditional craft techniques to produce work of visionary intensity. True, he commands an idiosyncratic oeuvre that includes microscaled clothing and furniture. And, admittedly, he has made objects incorporating hand-carved human bone, tapping into tropes of primitivism and outsider art. But as this show, which gathers fifty-odd sculptures and installations from the past twenty- five years, demonstrates, LeDray also possesses a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary scene. A master embroiderer and potter with a talent for fine and affecting detail, he turns age-old methods to deathless ends, probing the intersection of individual and collective imagination. Travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Nov. 18, 2010–Feb. 13, 2011.