This exhibition will include four works: a Giacometti painted bronze sculpture, Standing Woman, 1948; a large Mark di Suvero sculpture in metal and wood, entitled The A Train, 1966; a large-scale color photograph by Jeff Wall, A ventriloquist at a birthday party in October 1947, 1990; and a suite of seven carved wood sculptures by the American folk artist Edgar Tolson, entitled The Fall of Man. These works are being loaned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Schaulager, Basel; and the Milwaukee Art Museum, respectively.

When asked to organize an exhibition on a theme of his choice, the Los Angeles artist Charles Ray (born 1953) chose that of moral and amoral space, coming from Alberto Giacometti’s description of one of his own works. Charles Ray writes,

Space is the sculptor’s primary medium, a fact so obvious that it is easy to overlook. Rather than work toward an understanding of how a sculpture both creates and occupies space, we tend to focus on the comprehension of the subject matter and on the material qualities of the work of art.” The artist is interested in the way in which sculpture creates and occupies space socially, and he has chosen these four particular sculptures because each does so in a different way. “This exhibition was curated as an invitation to experience the poetics and artistic perception of both three dimensional and pictorial space.