Charles Ray

Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2003

Exh. Cat., Venice, 50th Biennale de Venezia: Dreams and Conflicts: the Dictatorship of the Viewer, 2003, p. 51, illustrated in color (another example)
Exh. Cat., Athens, DESTE Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art, Monument to Now: The Dakis Joannou Collection, 2004, p. 335, illustrated in color (another example) 
Exh. Cat., Venice, Palazzo Grassi, "Where Are We Going?" Selections from the François Pinault Collection, 2006, p. 54, illustrated in color and illustrated in color on the front cover (detail, another example)
Exh. Cat., Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Charles Ray - Black & White, 2006 (another example)
Exh. Cat., New York, New Museum, Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, 2010, p. 103, illustrated in color (another example)
Peter Schjeldahl, "Big Time: 'Skin Fruit' at the New Museum," The New Yorker, March 15, 2010, p. 78, illustrated in color (in installation at the New Museum, 2010, another example)
Exh. Cat., São Paulo, Bienal de São Paulo: In the Name of the Artists, American Contemporary Art from the Astrup Fearnley Collection, 2011, p. 34, illustrated in color (detail) and illustrated in color on the back cover (detail, another example)
Exh. Cat., Basel, Kunstmuseum Basel and Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1997-2014, 2014 (another example)

This sculpture is in excellent condition. The work is installed on top of two metal foot pads which are screwed into the base or floor, one of which has a short pin that inserts into the sculpture's proper left leg.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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When Aluminum Girl of 2003 made its formal debut at that year’s 50th Venice Biennale, Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, the emergence of a work by Charles Ray was momentous – not only for the arresting potency of this exceptional sculpture but as a reminder of the rarity of works by Ray. A sculpture nearly 8 years in the making, Aluminum Girl, 2003, is a classic icon from a corpus of works few in number and avidly sought. Judicious and concise in regard to concept and execution, Ray’s aesthetic process is exacting and thoughtful, and the precision, clarity, and poetry of Aluminum Girl is a testament to the powerful but limited artistic output over Ray’s 30 year career. The inclusion of the work in the Biennale was particularly noteworthy as it references the figure’s ancient antecedents while exploiting the materials and technical mastery of modernity which Ray had mastered to such compelling effect. Classically inspired and painted an impossible shade of white that recalls Greco-Roman Carrara marble, the hyper-real nude is a post-modern interpretation of antiquity and "offers a world...romantic dreams of a new modernity."  (Francesco Bonami, "I Have A Dream," in Exh. Cat., Venice, 50th Biennale de Venezia: Dreams and Conflicts: the Dictatorship of the Viewer, 2003, p. xxi)

For Ray, color and surface are meticulously considered. Aluminum Girl is a visual apotheosis of the artist's frank assessment that "in contemporary art, surface is an expression of anxiety, and no one is as anxious about surface as I am." (the artist interviewed by Robert Storr, "Anxious Spaces," Art in America, November 1998, p. 144) Painstaking measures were taken to achieve this other-worldly surface, one that is part bravura and part braggadocio. The effect however is mesmerizing: "complexity of form and quiet artistry, in Aluminum Girl, the quiet artistry prevails." (Exh. Cat., Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Where are We Going? Selections from the François Pinault Collection, 2006, Milan, p. 56) Precedents abound from the ethereal marble surfaces of Bernini to the refined forms of Brancusi and the stunning surfaces of David Smith’s Cubi series. Yet Ray’s attention to detail most directly recalls the sculptural output of his contemporary Jeff Koons whose Celebration series is similarly marked by impossibly pristine stainless steel surfaces. It is telling that Koons, as curator of Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, selected Aluminum Girl for inclusion in the show where he claimed, "I tried to choose iconic pieces and was intuitively trying to listen to works that seemed to have a really strong voice, works that really have a desire to try and present themselves." (Jeff Koons interviewed by Lisa Phillips, Exh. Cat., New York, The New Museum, Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, New York, 2010, p. 9)

First appearing in the Whitney Biennial in 1989 (and in several since) and showcased in a midcareer retrospective in 1998, the allure of Ray’s works can be traced to their ability to tackle sculptural concerns of scale, balance, mass, and illusion. His ambitious sculptural program took on seismic proportions in 1992, the year in which he produced the monumental variants of Fall '91 and the profoundly witty Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley, which at first glance appears provocative and profane, but was highly charged with a deeply humorous sexual impossibility. In 1993, Ray produced the hypnotic Family Romance, a sculpture composed of two parents and two young children rendered all in the same height. Unlike the store-window mannequins they resemble, the figures are anatomically correct and the title of the work is suggestive of inappropriate erotic currents within the family unit. The artist, however, was far more ambivalent than critics about the implications of his work, stating "it can be looked at psychologically or philosophically or personally. The interpretive nature of work is different than the work itself. The interpretation of the work isn't the key to understanding it. I'm worried about making a good sculpture. I'm not so worried about the interpretation of it." (Julie Belcove, "Charles Ray," W Magazine, November 2007, p. 349) The detached and unreadable expression of Aluminum Girl reflects Ray’s rejection of thematic or narrative referents, just as it betokens his admiration for the realistic core at the center of Giacometti’s existential figures. For Ray, the ultimate genius of Giacometti's sculpture was his ability to "imbue his work with the life and breath of our real world...they are alive, breathing, waiting for you to come and meet them." (the artist cited in “Thinking of Sculpture as Shaped by Space, The New York Times, October 7, 2001, p. 34) This gravitational push/pull of the physical, coupled with the psychological, is arguably the artistic origin of the seminal Aluminum Girl, which gives the impression that, at any moment, a living person might very well step out from beneath her white coat of paint.

The creation of Aluminum Girl, therefore, was a radical departure for the artist, as the zeitgeist of a new century heralded an epistemological shift in Ray's sculptural aesthetic. In one dramatic gesture, Ray indicated that "modern art is over, so I'm retrieving familiar forms and techniques to make something old new again." (Jerry Saltz, "Entropy in Venice," New York Magazine, June 19, 2009) Borrowing from Saltz's astute critical observation, Aluminum Girl must find inspiration 500 years prior, when 25-year-old Michelangelo created his colossal masterpiece, the 17-foot-tall marble David. From a huge block of marble, Michelangelo embraced the challenge of sculpture to mimic divine creation, thus fulfilling the Renaissance interpretation of the highest purpose of art. As such, David is considered a timeless masterpiece, an ideal male form combining heroic strength and human uncertainty. Michelangelo found a sculpture within the block of stone much as the human soul is found within the physical body. To that effect, Ray's Aluminum Girl ­is the David for the Post-Modern era. A futuristic feminine doppelgänger unearthed from alloy rather than marble, her very existence validates what has come before, what exists now, and the possibilities of the future.

Aluminum Girl began as a life-cast of his long-time friend, the artist Jennifer Pastor. Calm and meditative, Aluminum Girl evolved under the hands of its creator through a deliberate and obsessive exploration of medium.  Originally conceived in wood, plaster, and then synthetic fiberglass, Ray ultimately arrived at aluminum for its soft malleable appearance. It engaged Ray's fascination of integrating realism and abstraction, and the end result is an entirely independent sculpture that breaks away from the pedestal. Further, the inherent duality in the figuration and abstraction of Aluminum Girl achieves the manipulation of the viewer’s perception and experience of the sculpture which is at the heart of Ray's oeuvre: “with the passing of time, they frequently reveal themselves to be something other than the way they appear at first glance." (Exh. Cat., São Paulo, Bienal de São Paulo: In the Name of the Artists, American Contemporary Art from the Astrup Fearnley Collection, 2011, p. 25)

Charles Ray uniquely defies pre-existing art historical categorization. There is a strong urge to align him somehow, "since the birth of the avant-garde, in the mid-nineteenth century, Art History has been considered mainly in formal ways: what led to what, who begat whom." (Jerry Saltz, "Charles Ray," New York Magazine, June 15-22, 2009, p. 139) We could assess that Ray's ability to breathe improbable life into his pneumatic Aluminum Girl, is akin to a Post-Modern Pygmalion. Conceptually and materially conceived in milky layers, Aluminum Girl is a bewitching façade where weighty fragility and engaging aloofness collide. The surface begs for touch, but the distant gaze of the girl removes her from our space and time and evidences that Ray's sculptures are undeniably complex, challenging the assumptions of "what we think we know, and what is, and between what we expect and what we get." (Tom Morton, "The Shape of Things," Frieze, November-December 2007, p. 122)