Charles Ray will be introduced by Jack Bankowsky, editor-at-large of Artforum, who also serves on the faculty of ArtCenter's Graduate Art program.

Charles Ray (born 1953) is hailed as one of today’s most eminent sculptors. Though perhaps most best known for works that alter and refashion familiar objects, Ray’s engagement with the human form dates to his phenomenological and performative experiments of the 1970s, works in which the artist often deployed his own body. The 1990s saw a return to the human form in Ray’s art, and, somewhat unexpectedly, to the traditional problem of human depiction. Presaged by the mannequin sculptures at the beginning of that decade, Ray’s ongoing efforts with the figure would come to deploy increasingly sophisticated materials and techniques, including three-dimensional scanning and CNC routing. Huck and Jim (2014), a work originally planned for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s outdoor plaza, presents the protagonists from Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as larger-than-life-size figures machined in solid stainless steel. With Ray’s Horse and Rider of the same year, an equestrian self-portrait that depicts the artist as a somewhat beleaguered denizen of the western frontier, Huck and Jim joins a sequence of works dating back to his 1993 Firetruck that have reinvigorated the tradition of public sculpture.

Ray has been honored with solo museum exhibitions at venues including the Art Institute of Chicago (2015), Kunstmuseum Basel (2014), Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2006), and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998). His work was included in Documenta IX (1992), three iterations of the Venice Biennial (1993, 2003, 2013), and five installments of the Whitney Biennial (1989, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2010). 

The Graduate Art Seminar is a forum for graduate students, members of the ArtCenter community and the general public to enter into dialog with internationally recognized artists, critics, and art historians. The Seminar is a core component of ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program.

ArtCenter's Graduate Art program is based on intensive studio practice and rigorous academic coursework. The program is distinguished by its low faculty-to-student ratio that provides students with the attention and feedback they need to refine and achieve their artistic goals. Faculty and students are artists working in all genres—film, video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and installation. A significant number of alumni have achieved national and international acclaim and often return to share their insights and expertise as visiting faculty and guest lecturers.

Image: Horse and Rider, 2014. Solid stainless steel.