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The Work of Charles LeDray
Charles LeDray at The Whitney Museum
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 exhibition at the Whitney Museum.
CHARLES LEDRAY: workworkworkworkwork was initially shown and organized by Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and curated by ICA Associate Curator Randi Hopkins.
“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 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.”
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.
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.
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.)
And, 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
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