Charles LeDray: MENS SUITS

Suits, shirts, ties, and gloves… hundreds of them, painstakingly recreated on a diminutive scale in a dizzying array of colours and styles. Comprised of three distinct settings suggestive of a shabby second-hand clothing store, Charles LeDray's major new work MENS SUITS is a tour de force of meticulous detail and careful composition.

Resembling places we may have been and things we may have seen or worn, their reductive size imbues the ensemble with a strange and arresting presence. Mixed up and sorted out again, MENS SUITS exploits the tensions between circulation and use, value and exchange in a material world.

All Charles LeDray's work is like something we have seen or worn, but on a different scale. Much smaller than life-size, they have a quiet, arresting presence. As curator James Rondeau has written, they are "flamboyant and modest, tender and violent".

LeDray is one of the best kept secrets in contemporary art. Based in a small studio in New York, LeDray labours for years on each new project. Past works include two thousand unique miniature porcelain vessels, over three hundred little books and magazines and jewellery and buttons carved from human bone. Whilst other artists employ small armies of assistants, LeDray is a one-man band. Working mainly with textiles and ceramics, he meticulously stitches and sews, glazes and throws all his work.

Commissioned by Artangel, MENS SUITS has been in the making for the past three years and is LeDray's first major presentation in Europe.

Artangel presents:
Charles LeDray
MENS SUITS
Ort: The Fire Station, Chiltern Street, London