From August 22, 2026, the Fridericianum in Kassel presents Charles Ray’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. One of the most influential sculptors of his generation, Ray has spent more than five decades challenging the boundaries of sculpture, exploring the body, and material through an often uncanny combination of conceptual precision and technical complexity.

Rather than a retrospective, Ray has conceived the exhibition as a response to his own history with the Fridericianum. Its starting point is Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley… (1992), originally created for documenta 9 and now returning to the gallery where it was first shown. The work presents eight versions of Ray himself in an impossible encounter. Beyond its provocative sexuality, the sculpture considers the nature of the self. Ray sees it as the counterpart to Constantin Brâncuși’s The Kiss (1907/8): where two figures become one in Brâncuși’s sculpture, Ray removes the possibility of an other altogether.

This idea of introspection continues in Return to the One (2020), a seated figure based on Ray’s own body but conceived not as a portrait. Made from handmade paper, the work draws on the philosophy of Plotinus and his notion of a return to the One. Nearby, Clothes Pile (2020), an aluminium sculpture of discarded clothing, turns an everyday object into an abstract meditation on what can be hollow without being empty.

Elsewhere, Boy with Frog (2009) presents a nude boy encountering the world through his fascination with a frog, while Madonna and Child (2026), the exhibition’s newest work, reinterprets Christian iconography through Ray’s contemporary language. Together, the works suggest a tension between religion and science, innocence and knowledge.

Documenta was an important moment for the artist. The exhibition also returns to the gallery where Ray showed his work for documenta 9, presenting three sculptures publicly for the first time: the concrete Bull (2026), the bronze Flounder (2021), and Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog (2018), whose dramatic depiction of animal violence draws on classical antiquity.

Bringing together works made more than three decades apart, the exhibition is less a survey of Ray’s career than a conversation across time. The show will run until 3 January, 2027.