SPREAD | ArtCulture

By Kiša Lala

© Ray Caesar, Revelation, Courtesy of Jonathan Levine Gallery, NYC

[Part 2 of 2: Interview with Ray Caesar continued:]

Ray Caesar’s virtual dioramas are populated by a coterie of doll-like creatures. Caesar tells me he has maybe ten or twelve character studies with twenty variations of faces that he resuses, sometimes altering their facial expression by changing the shapes of their noses, morphing smiles with frowns, but he says that somehow, they always return to a look of serenity. Recently he is using more painterly backgrounds and the final digital prints are varnished, giving the illusion of a painted surface that enhances their dream-like milieus. Often things are hidden from view in the finished artworks: if we looked inside the mouths of his creations, they would have teeth and tongues. In Silent Partner, the dismembered parts of a body are concealed within drawers, representing his hidden disassociated selves.

© Ray Caesar, Blessed, 2007 Courtesy of Jonathan Levine Gallery, NYC

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By Kiša Lala

Ray Caesar, Silent Partner digital media on panel (UltraChrome print on Epson Luster paper, mounted on Dibond), framed Edition of 20, Courtesy of Jonathan Levine Gallery, NYC

Part1 of 2: Interview with Ray Caesar

It had taken months of trying before I finally met with reclusive artist Ray Caesar, just before his new show opened at New York’s Jonathan Levine gallery. I found him to be a pleasant, soft-spoken gentleman, surprisingly forthcoming about his troubled past and the process of healing that his art represents.

Caesar renders art using 3D software with movable appendages operable in a virtual world, sometimes scanning his or his wife Jane’s skin from the area below the eyes and eyebrows, giving his creatures a sanguine, sentient appearance. He is their Pygmalion but through their ‘autonomous’ anatomies they ascend as rulers of their domain. Caesar, whose name connotes emperor, is also the root for caesarean, and according to mythic tradition, Julius Caesar was the first to be delivered in such fashion by a midwife. Childbirth can be viewed as eruptive and emergent, painful but cathartic; the generating host can be consumed by the process. Caesar’s art is his progeny but also the instrument of his healing.

© Ray Caesar, Back Birth, Courtesy of Jonathan Levine Gallery, NYC

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