Two of the art world’s most controversial current works are on display in the new exhibit “Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1997-2014,” which opened at the Art Institute last Friday.
Huck and Jim never made it to the Whitney at all. It was rejected before completion, when, as Calvin Tomkins reports in a recent New Yorker profile of Ray, the Whitney curators decided it wouldn’t be appropriate to put the work in the path of the general public.
There’s a lot of metal in this literally weighty show. Some of the pieces are solid steel—like the antiheroic ten-ton Horse and Rider (with the artist slouching in the saddle) you have to trek out to the South Garden to see. Most of the human figures, whether in gleaming metal or flat white paint, are eerily smooth, with eyes as blank as those of the ancient Greek statuary that Ray credits as an inspiration and nearly expressionless faces. Genitals, however, are prominent and detailed.
Through 10/4 Art Institute of Chicago 111 S. Michigan 312-443-3600artic.edu $23, $18 Chicago residents
