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16/11/2010

Charles LeDray

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The New York-based artist Charles LeDray, known for his diminutive yet powerfully resonant objects made of fabric, clay, and human bone, is the subject of a major mid-career survey this fall at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Organized by Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, where it was initially shown, and curated by ICA Associate Curator Randi Hopkins, CHARLES LEDRAY: workworkworkworkwork goes on view in the Whitney’s third-floor Peter Norton Family Galleries, November 18, 2010—February 13, 2011. After the Whitney, it travels to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, May 8—September 11, 2011.

With approximately fifty sculptures and installations spanning the past twenty-five years, CHARLES LEDRAY: workworkworkworkwork traces the themes that have evolved and developed through the artist’s oeuvre to date. “Since the start of his career, much has been written about Charles LeDray’s early work in terms of childhood, sexual identity, personal history, and craftsmanship,” writes Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director, in a catalogue essay that focuses on the captured moment and the fugitive sense of time in LeDray’s work. “...So many of LeDray’s early works convey this fleeting sense of love and loss—what was there is now gone, represented only by a surrogate object.”

In her foreword to the catalogue, ICA Director Jill Medvedow notes, “LeDray’s meticulous hand stitching, exquisite bone carving, and masterful ceramics seduce us with their virtuosity, but it is his consistent inquiry into the complex overlaps between community and the individual, uniqueness and diversity, absence and presence, mourning and celebration that gives LeDray’s art its aesthetic power and great humanity.”

In an era of high-tech mass production, LeDray remains committed to a painstaking manual process, unlike many artists of his generation who have embraced less hands-on methods of art-making. While some of LeDray’s processes are rooted in the traditions of folk art, his art is in no way “naïve.” Having spent years as a museum guard and art handler, LeDray absorbed and was inspired by centuries of art. Whitney curator Carter Foster, who is overseeing the installation of the show in New York, notes, “LeDray’s meticulous making and his virtuosity with materials is often what initially attracts the viewer, but his work has a fascinating relationship with art history as well. This comes through formally, for example, in his incredible ceramics, which reference the entire history of the medium and of the ‘vessel’ as art. But it also comes through in the way he engages display and cataloguing. These two concepts are crucial for our understanding of the art of the past, and LeDray uses these histories to develop an aesthetic that is both poetic and mysterious.”

“LeDray doesn't set out to make small-scale sculpture—a notion that might strike you as odd when you're bending down to get a better look at one of his creations,” says exhibition curator Randi Hopkins. “The sculptures can be considered simply the size they need to be—small enough to demand that we look closer and to let us know they've been made by hand. These works aren't undersized but concentrated, with an emotional impact that far exceeds their dimensions.”

Among the works to be shown are Hall Tree (2006), a standing wooden coat rack hung with coats, with a few hooks still free; the colorful Party Bed (2006-2007) with coats of all sizes and patterns seemingly tossed onto a bed while the festivities take place in another room; Village People (2003-2006), an installation of twenty-one tiny hats that conjures a parade of identities; and Orrery (1997), LeDray’s earliest work made from carved bone, and one which refers to ancient models of the solar system. Some works are connected to personal history and memory, others to communities and social milieus, or the viewer’s sense of time and place within a vast universe—all ideas that recur throughout the exhibition.

LeDray's most recent work is characterized by increasingly expansive, multi-part installations that require years to create. The exhibition premieres Throwing Shadows (2008-2010), an extraordinary new ceramic work, which includes more than 3,000 small black porcelain pots. (LeDray’s earlier Milk and Honey, now in the Whitney’s collection, an astonishing multi-tiered work containing 2,000 tiny white glazed porcelain vessels on glass shelves, will also be shown.) Making its US debut in the exhibition is MENS SUITS, an installation that brings viewers to the floor to examine three very distinct rooms of a second-hand clothing shop in which every item is rendered in extremely precise, intimately wrought detail and scale. In a scene that feels suspended in time and space, MENS SUITS invites viewers to imagine the lives through which these objects seem to have passed—and, perhaps, any chance of their future use and continued existence.

About the Artist
Charles LeDray was born in 1960 in Seattle, Washington, and currently lives and works in New York. The artist’s previous exhibitions include a solo show organized by the ICA Philadelphia (2002) and a number of significant group exhibitions including Sculpture, the Cartin Collection, Hartford, Connecticut (2005); Past Presence: Childhood and Memory, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2005); and the Lyon Biennale, France (2000). In 1993, LeDray received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and in 1997 he was the recipient of the Prix de Rome from the American Academy in Rome. The artist’s work can be found in major public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Publication
The ICA and Skira/Rizzoli have co-published a comprehensive illustrated catalogue designed by Stefan Sagmeister. The publication features a foreword by ICA Director Jill Medvedow; and essays by former ICA Curator Jen Mergel; Artangel Co-Director and Curator James Lingwood; and Whitney Museum Director Adam D. Weinberg.

Image: Charles, 1995, Fabric, thread, metal, plastic, paint, 19 x 14 x 4 1/2 inches (48.3 x 35.6 x 11.4 cm), Collection of Barbara and Leonard Kaban, Courtesy of Sperone Westwater

Organized by The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

Significant support for the Whitney’s presentation is provided by Norman and Melissa Selby, Pamela and Arthur Sanders, Alice and Tom Tisch, Nina and Michael Zilkha, Mickey Cartin, and Eileen and Michael Cohen.

Press contacts:
Stephen Soba, Molly Gross
Tel (212) 570-3633 Fax (212) 5704169 pressoffice@whitney.org

Press preview Wednesday, November 17, 2010 10 am–12 pm
at 11 am, followed by a tour with Whitney curator Carter Foster and curatorial assistant Margot Norton

The Whitney Museum is located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York City.
Museum hours are:
Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday.
General admission: $18. Full-time students and visitors ages 19–25 and 62 & over: $12. Visitors 18 & under and Whitney members: FREE. Admission is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays, 6–9 p.m.

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