Opinion
Charles LeDray’s Miniatures Zoom-in on Scale
THE DAILY PIC: At Craig Starr, LeDray's shrunken works have big effects.
by
Blake Gopnik
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THE DAILY PIC (#1653): Craig Starr Gallery in New York is a diminutive space specializing in jewel-box shows of important work, such as its wonderful micro-survey of early Rauschenbergs in 2014. So it’s especially appropriate that this herculean munchkin of a gallery should be hosting a selection of works by Charles LeDray, a sculptor who specializes in the miniature.
This strange little coat is only about eight inches high, but rather than feeling like clothing for a doll, it feels like something real and normal seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
One of the strangest features of realistic representation, still not fully understood by psychologists, is how much scale doesn’t matter in our reading of images. See a fashion model four inches tall in a magazine, or life-size on a bus shelter or stretched out on a billboard, and she seems to be the same person in all three, and to have a similar relationship to us.
I think LeDray gets at that in his art, but working in 3D adds to the perceptual and emotional tension. (Courtesy the artist and Craig Starr Gallery, NY)
For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
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