Shoeless Ray: Charles Ray, Contemporary Art’s Most Obsessive Perfectionist, Has a New Show at Matthew Marks

A few years ago, Los Angeles–based artist Charles Ray had heart trouble that required surgery. After he recovered, one of his doctors told him that he should start walking as much as possible. “So I was taking these really long walks,” he told The Observer last week at the Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea, where an exhibition of his work has just gone on view. Every day, he said, he would find himself walking by the same bench at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Seventh Street, in Santa Monica, “and usually a homeless guy was on it, and I would talk to him and give him some money and stuff like that.”
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