
Boy
<p>Having been employed as a department-store janitor during his freshman year of college, Charles Ray understands the unease a mannequin can inspire—an inanimate object that one might readily mistake for a live body. His work is also charged with the purely sculptural tensions that exist between surface and interior, armature and appendage, and or size and scale. With <em>Boy</em>, Ray created a particularly disquieting figure. The sculpture stands just shy of six feet tall, the artist’s exact height, yet maintains the softness of youth in its rounded cheeks and limbs. The boy is clad in outdated garments, hovering “between baby and Hitler<br>youth,” in the words of one critic. Additionally, the boy’s pose and gesture suggest a confrontational manner at odds with his neutral face.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1992
- Dimensions
- 181.6 × 68.6 × 86.4 cm (71 1/2 × 27 × 34 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Charles Ray
Artist

Sculpture
Charles Ray (1953) is an American sculptor known for his strange and enigmatic sculptures that draw the viewer's perceptual judgments into question in jarring and unexpected ways. In 2007, Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times wrote that Ray's "career as an artist…is easily among the most important of the last twenty years."
Full artist profile →More
More by Charles Ray
Huck and Jim
2014 · Machined stainless steel
Untitled
2003 · Fiber-tipped pen on ivory wove paper
Untitled
2003 · Fiber-tipped pen on ivory wove paper
Untitled
2003 · Five drawings: Fiber-tipped pen on ivory wove paper
Untitled
2003 · Fiber-tipped pen on ivory wove paper
Untitled
2003 · Fiber-tipped pen on ivory wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Charles Ray
- Year
- 1992
- Dimensions
- 181.6 × 68.6 × 86.4 cm (71 1/2 × 27 × 34 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1992-143040
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





