Bass Museum Will Present Exhibition By Artist Charles LeDray
April 27, 2012 through August 12, 2012
Bass Museum of Art
2100 Collins Ave
Miami Beach, FL 33139

This April, Bass Museum of Art will present an exhibition of four works by New York based artist Charles LeDray – the first presentation of the artist’s work in Miami Beach to date. The highly anticipated exhibition, curated by Adjunct Curator Steven Homes, will open to the public on Friday, April 27, 2012 following a private preview. “Charles LeDray” will be on view through August 12, 2012 and will include four distinct pieces from LeDray, including his major work, “Mens Suits.”

While “workworkworkworkwork” included more than 50 works of art spanning the artist’s career, “Charles LeDray” will concentrate on four pieces, including “Mens Suits,” which the artist meticulously labored over for three years. The clothes include miniaturized jackets, shirts and polo tops…even trousers, ties, bow ties, gloves and hangers. The result is a focused exhibition allowing boundless physical and imaginative space to four distinctly selected works. In contrast to a survey that seeks to explore the full range of an artist’s concerns or approaches, “Charles LeDray” will contemplate the artist’s work in a specific place at a specific time. This exhibition is focused on creating a unique dialogue between four individual, powerful works.

LeDray has often been described as the best kept secret of the contemporary art world, laboring for years before completing a sculpture. He does not often discuss the meaning of his work, leaving pieces open to interpretation. LeDray is best known for his miniature but proportioned sculptures of everyday objects. His work is poetry of material, scale and cultural resonance, rich with history and emotion. Renowned for exquisite objects crafted in a range of materials from fabric to human bone, LeDray’s work touches on loss, pathos, and absence.

Charles LeDray is an American sculptor born in Seattle in 1960, who now lives and works in New York. Primarily self-taught, he began his career as a security guard at the Seattle Art Museum. LeDray went on to work as an art handler for a private gallery, where his first piece of work was selected for inclusion in a group show just hours before the opening. Recent solo exhibitions include Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and Seattle Art Museum.

Located in Miami Beach, the Bass Museum of Art offers a dynamic year-round calendar of exhibitions exploring the connections between contemporary art and works of art from its permanent collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, textiles, Apulian Vessel Gallery and Egyptian Gallery. Artists’ projects, educational programs, lectures, concerts and free family days complement the works on view. Founded in 1963 when the City of Miami Beach accepted a collection of Renaissance and Baroque works of art from collectors John and Johanna Bass, the collection was housed in an Art Deco building designed in 1930 by Russell Pancoast. Architect Arata Isozaki designed an addition to the museum between 1998 and 2001 that doubled its size from 15,000 to 35,000 square feet. Most recently, the museum selected internationally acclaimed Oppenheim Architecture + Design to lead its first phase of design and renovation tied to the 2010 completion of Miami Beach’s Collins Park. Oppenheim redesigned and relocated the museum’s arrival area to flow from and into the new park on Collins Avenue. For more information, please visit www.bassmuseum.org.

The Bass Museum of Art is generously funded by the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture and members of the Bass Museum of Art.