FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Regen Projects II
9016 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424
Fax. (310) 276-7430
www.regenprojects.com


NEW SCULPTURE BY CHARLES RAY
May 5 – June 30, 2007
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 5, 12:00 – 5:00 pm

Regen Projects is proud to present a new sculpture by Charles Ray. This work was made over the last ten years in both Los Angeles and Osaka, Japan. The inspiration for the sculpture came from a fallen tree that Ray came upon while traveling through California's central coast. The finished sculpture is a carved rendition of this original object. The piece was created with the assistance of master woodcarver Yuboku Mukouyoshi and his assistants in Osaka out of a high grade Japanese cypress called "hinoki".
In this work, Charles Ray has merged form and action. Like his best sculptures, this work occupies a place between abstraction and representation, encompassing the philosophical, psychological, and the visceral.
"For an artist like Ray…traditional distinctions do not hold: in his object lessons, common dualities like traditional/vanguard, abstract/real, mind/body, animate/inanimate, private/social, are collapsed or inverted…By literalizing the real, Ray crosses back into illusion and metaphor. He has described his work repeatedly in this way: '[I was] trying to make something that was so abstract it became real or so real that it became abstract. [When] you go in so far, you come out the other side.'"
(Lisa Phillips. Charles Ray, published by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Scalo Verlag, Zurich, 1998, pp. 103-104)
Charles Ray's work has been the subject of exhibitions through Europe and the United States. Recent solo exhibitions include Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Rooseum-Center for Contemporary Art, Malmo; ICA, London; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; and Kunsthalle Zurich. Monographs of Ray's work have been published by Rooseum-Center for Contemporary Art, Malmo; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Scalo Verlag, Zurich.
The exhibition will be on view from Saturday May 5th - June 30th. For further information please contact Jennifer Loh or Yasmine Rahimzadeh at (310) 276-5424.

At Regen Projects I
633 North Almont Drive
Jack Pierson: April 14 – May 12, 2007
Scott McFarland: May 19 – June 23, 2007
Gallery Artists: July/August 2007
Lari Pittman: September 2007