Ray, Charles (1953-…), is an American sculptor. He is best known for his lifelike figures and for his experimental pieces. 
Charles Ray was born in 1953 in Chicago, Illinois. His parents owned an art school, and he developed an interest in art at a young age. In 1960, Ray moved to Winnetka with his family. In 1971, Ray enrolled in the University of Iowa, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree four years later. He was mentored by the Canadian sculptor Roland Brener. In 1979, Ray earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
Ray’s early work included performance-based pieces in which he experimented with interactions between his body and sculptural elements. For example, he posed pinned to a wall by a wood plank.
In 1981, Ray moved to California and accepted a teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles. There, he abandoned performance-based pieces for abstract sculpture. One piece, Ink Line (1987) featured a line of dripping black ink falling from a ceiling. Another featured a large steel cube painted white.
Ray again shifted his art style in the 1990’s. Inspired by mannequins, Ray began to create aluminum, fiberglass, and stainless steel figures. Two of Ray’s sculptures, for example, feature characters from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Ray and his artistic team have also created sculptures that are recreations of objects. For example, they have recreated a crashed car using fiberglass and carved a replica of a fallen tree out of wood. In another notable sculpture, Ray created a toy firetruck enlarged to life size. His art has been featured multiple times at the Whitney Biennial, an art exhibition in New York City.
