As an artist working across sculpture, painting, photography, and performance, Joe Ray resists easy categorization. Ray, like many artists in Southern California, began producing cast resin sculptures in the 1960s. Simultaneously, he embarked on his series of signature, luminously atmospheric Nebula paintings in the 1970s, that seamlessly dovetail into the narrative of the sculpture-focused Light and Space movement. Ray’s deeply personal photographs speak to a legacy of humanistic, documentary-style photography with an intimate approach to its autobiographical subject matter. Inside Out will be Ray’s first solo exhibition in New York and will feature paintings, sculpture, and photographs.

Joe Ray (b. 1944 in Beaumont, TX) was raised in Louisiana and moved to Los Angeles in 1963. After serving in the Vietnam War, Ray immersed himself in the burgeoning art scene of the time: he assisted Larry Bell in the studio; enrolled in the first class of CalArts under the mentorship of Nam June Paik and Allan Kaprow; and collaborated with fellow Studio Z members Senga Nengudi and David Hammons.

Ray’s work is in many private and public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, UT; AÏSHTI Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon; among others. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as LACMA, Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA; the Contemporary Art Museum Houston (CAMH), Houston, TX; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Francisco, CA; and the Contemporary Art Center (CACNO), New Orleans, LA.