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At Jeffrey Deitch and Matthew Marks, Charles Ray Is Still Full of Surprises

The artist sees the two L.A. shows not as bookends to his career but as a single continuous body of work—what he calls a "mereology"—that descends across decades and connects his earliest performances to his most recent sculptures.

The only thing predictable about a Charles Ray show is that it will be unpredictable. His sculptures, ranging from a life-sized toy firetruck to a marble cube filled with Pepto-Bismol, are so varied that his trademark could be “expect the unexpected.” The Chicago-born sculptor currently has two shows in his hometown, Los Angeles, at Jeffrey Deitch through June 6 and at Matthew Marks through June 13.

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The first features three older works, including Firetruck (1993), a life-sized toy truck made from aluminum and fiberglass. The second features four pieces, including one he worked on for over 10 years, Fallen Horse (2025), a granite sculpture of a life-sized horse lying on its side.

“There’s a lot of distance between the two shows and of course there are similarities, but then they’re really quite different, too,” Ray tells Observer, suggesting it’s best to walk the two miles between the galleries. “I don’t think that they’re schizophrenically different but for me it was interesting to see the temporal distance between Firetruck and Fallen Horse.”

Firetruck is part of the Broad collection but, at just over 47 feet long, it’s seldom exhibited. After being in storage for years, it took some restoration to get it looking shiny and bright again for the Deitch show. “I was always very resistant to showing it indoors, but then when it was brought in for the first time, I thought a lot about back in........

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