Striking vision: a child, seated and naked, plays with a small car in the huge rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce in Paris. At a good distance, the carcass of a life-size pick-up responds to him, while the self-portrait of the artist, seated on a stele, seems to observe the scene.
Invited to exhibit in this vast setting of the Pinault collection and simultaneously in the smaller spaces of the Center Pompidou, the American Charles Ray, 69, has displayed some forty of his works there and woven a whole set of correspondences between them. Like this inaugural trilogy where the child, the sixty-year-old artist and the decrepit pick-up offer a meditation on the passage of time, the shattered dreams of an industrial civilization which took the car as its emblem.
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Beyond this strong symbolism, a whole field of tension also opens up in the triangulation of the works. The twisted body of the child pushing his toy with opaque windows, sculpted in stainless steel and painted immaculate white, contrasts with the rusty wreckage, open to all winds.
The artist had abandoned a similar pick-up in his youth. He recovered a compressed model from scrap metal which he patiently unfolded and straightened. As for his self-portrait, he modeled it in Japanese paper, which he has recently been making in his studio. Between manual work and factory product, empty and full, vulnerable or rot-proof, light or heavy, mobile or static, Charles Ray declines all the questions of sculpture in his works which he qualifies as“philosophical objects”.
A scent of scandal
He had started unsuccessfully with minimalist sculptures, sometimes transformed into prostheses to support his own body (two photos remind him of Beaubourg). Then in 1990, the artist switched, at the age of 37, to pop and hyper-realistic figuration, a reflection of a wavering American Dream.
From then on, his spectacular images seduced, carried by a scent of scandal when Charles Ray exhibited at the Documenta in Cassel, in 1992, Oh, Charley, Charley, Charley : eight life-size replicas of the naked artist, in full sexual orgy with… himself. In fact, a parody where he mocks his narcissistic obsession to stage himself as much as the voyeurism of the spectator, thus trapped. Because on closer inspection, the Charley brush against each other, but never touch.
The same year, the artist wowed mega-collectors with his Big Lady. Window mannequins, enlarged to 1.3 scale and dressed as executive secretaries, next to which visitors to Beaubourg or the Bourse de Commerce will feel very small. François Pinault is one of the big fans.
After commissioning a work from Charles Ray for Pointe de la Douane, his exhibition venue in Venice where the sculpture is Boy With Frog, business mantoday placed the self-portrait of the artist as a “lonesome cowboy”, who has lost the reins, in front of the entrance to the Bourse de commerce.
Lures to question our perceptions
Do not be fooled by this image of the artist as a loser. All his work works on the principle of lure and plays to destabilize, to question our beliefs and our perceptions. Also one will not be surprised to find exhibited, at François Pinault, the figure of a Saint Thomas and even a baroque Christ on the cross, disproportionately enlarged in papier-mâché, as if in weightlessness.
Another trompe-l’œil at the Center Pompidou: this photograph of Charles Ray, having taken LSD and recounting having thought he saw the walls topple over on him. It is presented in a convex frame, on an equally convex wall, barely perceptible at first sight. Opposite No, another photographic self-portrait answers him, arms crossed, closed. Except that it is only the image of a mannequin (emblem of the consumer society), modeled in the effigy of the sculptor.
Biting irony
In this world where he confides that he never knew how to stand up straight, Charles Ray continues to dynamite our role-playing games. Like this young boy, decked out in a toga and a sword, like a junk Roman warrior. Is he also hiding a nod to David’s painting? We can have fun unmasking the crowd of irreverent allusions to the history of art. For example, at the Venus of Urbino of Titian, whose seductive posture the sculptor caricatures in Mother hippie, in full sexual liberation.
→ CRITICAL. Whistler, master of the blueprint at the Musée d’Orsay
At rare moments, however, this biting irony fades away: in front of the most destitute, whose relaxed or sleeping bodies Charles Ray captures with empathy. here is Jeff (at François Pinault), portrayed as a solitary and exhausted king, in a block of marble which magnifies him. As if the abandonment of this man had finally authorized the artist to reveal his own humanity.
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An unprecedented partnership
This is a first in Paris: a major private exhibition venue is joining forces with a major public institution to present together a double exhibition by the same artist. Jean-Pierre Criqui, curator at the Center Pompidou in Beaubourg, had been planning to show the work of Charles Ray for six years. François Pinault also dreamed of it: he has followed the artist for more than twenty years and owns 21 of his works, two of which are on loan to Beaubourg, which has none.
However, one can wonder about the advisability of devoting so much space to the same artist when so many others deserve to be honoured. As for the visitor, in the absence of a single ticket, he is only entitled to a reduced rate in the second place, ie an overall price of 24 or 25 €.