Sperone Westwater is pleased to announce an exhibition of new sculpture by Charles LeDray.  For his first exhibition in New York since 1996, the artist will exhibit eight new works.  Among these, LeDray presents thousands of glazed ceramic vessel forms in two steel and glass vitrines; a sculpture of a cricket cage fashioned out of human bone; and “Charly Chas” a sculpture that appears to be a portrait of its maker. Also on view will be a sculpture in denim that was ripped, distressed, pieced and appliquéd with embroidered patches, metal and leather attachments.

The artist is currently the subject of a traveling survey exhibition, “Charles LeDray, Sculpture 1989 – 2002,” organized by the ICA Philadelphia (11 May – 14 July 2002), with subsequent venues at The Arts Club of Chicago (20 September – 21 December, 2002), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (25 January – 6 April 2003), Seattle Art Museum (26 April – 27 July 2003).  In reviewing the show for The New York Times (31 May 2002), Holland Cotter writes, “Mr. LeDray’s art is on its own formal track and occupies its own psychic universe.  In it, fear, loss and anger lie close to the bone; humor is dark but pervasive; and art, in the form of self-tutored virtuosity, makes past and present alike manageable, sometimes transcendently so.”

LeDray’s work can be found in the following public collections: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 1993 he received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and in 1997 he received the Prix de Rome from the American Academy in Rome.

A full-color catalogue was produced on the occasion of his current retrospective by the ICA and includes an introduction by the director, Claudia Gould, as well as a conversation between her and the artist and an essay by Russell Ferguson, Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Programs and Chief Curator, UCLA Hammer Museum. This exhibition was just awarded second place in the category ‘Best Show in a Kunsthall or Alternative Space’ by the International Art Critics Association.