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Lot Essay
"What makes an interesting work is what the trip’s like to the artifice [...] It’s where you finally find the crack in the foundation." - Charles Ray
Finely rendered in white porcelain, Hand Holding Egg is an arresting example of the idiosyncratic and psychological powerful sculptures that have defined Charles Ray’s career. Exemplifying the way that Ray’s works make you look twice, at first the sculpture appears to be a hyper-real cast of a child’s hand holding an egg that seems ready to hatch. Look closer, and it subtly twists the reality of that initial perception. Not only is the child’s arm hollow, but so is the egg. The work raises questions about vulnerability and trust, and the intimacy of looking. “What makes an interesting work is what the trip’s like to the artifice,” Ray has said. “It’s where you finally find the crack in the foundation” (C. Ray, quoted in J.L. Belcove, “Charles Ray”, W Magazine, Nov 1, 2007).
Executed in 2007, Hand Holding Egg was made the same year that “Boy with Frog” was commissioned for the Punta della Dogana by Francois Pinault. Unveiled at the Venice Biennale in 2009, it explores a similar motif to Hand Holding Egg. Both carry a tension created by a child carrying a delicate life form, calling attention to the potential for power and tenderness contained in human hands.
Hand Holding Egg also relates to the sculpture Chicken (2007), which is in the collection of the Glenstone, Washington D.C. This sculpture took years to perfect; Ray kept an incubator to hatch chicks to properly observe them. Ray has said of Chicken, “I wanted the life force, or the energy, of the chick hatching to be met with the energy of your looking—with your bending over, with your curiosity” (C. Ray, quoted in J.L. Belcove, “Charles Ray, W Magazine, Nov 1, 2007). His words apply equally to Hand Holding Egg, which places the viewer in the position of the child, attentively watching the egg grasped in their hand.
Ray has often spoken about his belief in sculpture as a “behavior rather than a practice” (C. Ray, quoted in “Charles Ray with Toby Kamps: In Conversation,” Brooklyn Rail, May 2022). Seen in this light, it is understandable that the interaction of a child with an object might compel him as a subject. Speaking about this fascination, he has explained: “The beauty of watching a child stack block is not in our amazement at what he or she is building, but in the child’s relationship to gravity and emotion... The figure of a child is produced in play just as the ordering of toy blocks is produced by the child. These equations also run in multiple directions. Location, place, or position is the soul of a sculpture. There isn’t a separation of the soul and the body” (C. Ray, quoted in ibid.)
Finely rendered in white porcelain, Hand Holding Egg is an arresting example of the idiosyncratic and psychological powerful sculptures that have defined Charles Ray’s career. Exemplifying the way that Ray’s works make you look twice, at first the sculpture appears to be a hyper-real cast of a child’s hand holding an egg that seems ready to hatch. Look closer, and it subtly twists the reality of that initial perception. Not only is the child’s arm hollow, but so is the egg. The work raises questions about vulnerability and trust, and the intimacy of looking. “What makes an interesting work is what the trip’s like to the artifice,” Ray has said. “It’s where you finally find the crack in the foundation” (C. Ray, quoted in J.L. Belcove, “Charles Ray”, W Magazine, Nov 1, 2007).
Executed in 2007, Hand Holding Egg was made the same year that “Boy with Frog” was commissioned for the Punta della Dogana by Francois Pinault. Unveiled at the Venice Biennale in 2009, it explores a similar motif to Hand Holding Egg. Both carry a tension created by a child carrying a delicate life form, calling attention to the potential for power and tenderness contained in human hands.
Hand Holding Egg also relates to the sculpture Chicken (2007), which is in the collection of the Glenstone, Washington D.C. This sculpture took years to perfect; Ray kept an incubator to hatch chicks to properly observe them. Ray has said of Chicken, “I wanted the life force, or the energy, of the chick hatching to be met with the energy of your looking—with your bending over, with your curiosity” (C. Ray, quoted in J.L. Belcove, “Charles Ray, W Magazine, Nov 1, 2007). His words apply equally to Hand Holding Egg, which places the viewer in the position of the child, attentively watching the egg grasped in their hand.
Ray has often spoken about his belief in sculpture as a “behavior rather than a practice” (C. Ray, quoted in “Charles Ray with Toby Kamps: In Conversation,” Brooklyn Rail, May 2022). Seen in this light, it is understandable that the interaction of a child with an object might compel him as a subject. Speaking about this fascination, he has explained: “The beauty of watching a child stack block is not in our amazement at what he or she is building, but in the child’s relationship to gravity and emotion... The figure of a child is produced in play just as the ordering of toy blocks is produced by the child. These equations also run in multiple directions. Location, place, or position is the soul of a sculpture. There isn’t a separation of the soul and the body” (C. Ray, quoted in ibid.)