Charles Ray b 1953 in Chicago (USA), lives in Los Angeles (USA). Ray's primary thematic concerns center around containment, integration, isolation, and self-sufficiency. A leader in Conceptual Realism, Ray's best work offers a metaphor for the gap between the literal and the symbolic (or the known and the unknown). His art is compelling in its representation of consciousness as uncertain and fugitive, something toward which we continually grasp. His work seems to capture the strategic orientation and inescapable reflexiveness of the resurgent Realist figuration we've seen in this post-Postmodern era. It often involves odd discrepancies in resolution, a visual mismatch among parts, or a discomfiting slip between the model and the finished product. Other works make powerful use of shifts in scale, destabilizing our customary relationships to the objects they represent.
"These two identical, adjacent, battery-operated clocks were initially set to the same time, but, with time, they will inevitably fall out of sync. Gonzalez-Torres created this work shortly after his partner, Ross Laycock, was diagnosed with AIDS. By assigning these redundant objects the title "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers), the artist transformed these public, neutral devices used for the measurement of time into personal and poetic meditations on human relationships, mortality, and time's inevitable flow. Of the light-blue background, Gonzalez-Torres said, 'For me if a beautiful memory could have a color that color would be light blue.'"