Photo By Gail
On a cold October day, a young Victorian boy found a giant hand in the woods. A few of the elderly locals recognized the strange relic and told the boy a story about its unusual origins. About 100 years earlier, a farmer in the village woke up to discover he had been cursed with what was described as “troll hands.” It was quite unbelievable.
Continue reading The Discovery of The Hand By Travis Louis
All Photos By Gail
Having been employed as a department store janitor during his freshman year of college, Charles Ray (b. 1953) understands the unease that a mannequin — an inanimate object that one might readily mistake for a live human — can inspire. Ray’s work is also charged with purely sculptural tensions that exist between surface and interior, armature and appendage and / or size and scale. With Boy (1992), Ray created a particularly disquieting figure.
Museum Guard With Sense of Humor Poses With Boy
The sculpture stands just shy of six feet tall, the artist’s exact height, yet maintains the softness of youth in its rounded cheeks and limbs. The boy is clad in outdated garments, hovering ‘between baby and Hitler youth,” in the words of one critic. Additionally, the boy’s pose and gesture suggest a confrontational manner at odds with his neutral expression.
Photographed at the Art Institute of Chicago.