How can I buy a work by Charles P. Reay?

Bruno David Gallery handles the sale of available works by Charles P. Reay. For prices and availability, email info@brunodavidgallery.com or call +1 314 696 2377.

Where can I see work by Charles P. Reay in person?

At Bruno David Gallery, 7513 Forsyth Boulevard, Saint Louis, Missouri 63105, during public hours or by appointment.

What does Charles P. Reay make?

Sculptures, installations, assemblages, drawings and paintings that often start from found objects and well-known works of art history, such as Persistance of Memory (2011), Tricycle Wheel (2013) and an installation after Piero della Francesca’s portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza (2022).

Where is Charles P. Reay based?

Charles P. Reay lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.

Has Charles P. Reay had an exhibition at Bruno David Gallery?

Yes. Frederigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza (10 September 2022 to 14 January 2023); Trilogy (2 November to 28 December 2019) are among his exhibitions at the gallery. Catalogues can be read in the gallery’s Publications library at brunodavidgallery.com/publications.

Charles P. Reay

Charles P. Reay (born 1938) is a St. Louis-based multidisciplinary artist who makes sculptures, installations, assemblages, drawings and paintings that often start from found objects and familiar works of art history. In Persistance of Memory (2011), a dead mouse sits between the branches of a coral-like piece of wood, in place of Salvador Dalí’s melting clock. Tricycle Wheel (2013) answers Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1913) with forms drawn from Ikea and the Big Wheel toy, and a 2022 installation reworks Piero della Francesca’s profile portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza.

Reay works in a glass-walled studio on a wooded hillside, filled with collections, collages, toys, sketches, mannequins, maquettes and photographs that he has called “triggers for ideas.” The gallery describes the studio as a space removed from everyday routine, where he works by free association and trial and error, without fixed rules of taste or beauty. His installations carry that process into the gallery for viewers to explore.

Reay studied design at Washington University in St. Louis and spent time in Los Angeles with Charles Eames.

Reay spent 40 years at the St. Louis architecture firm HOK, where he came to specialize in museum and exhibit spaces, retiring around 2004. His projects include the Saint Louis Zoo’s Living World, the John Deere Pavilion in Illinois, the Silver Beach amusement center in Michigan and The Wild Center in Tupper Lake, New York, where he was lead designer of the 1999 master plan. He later designed the center’s Wild Walk, a treetop trail that opened in 2015.

Bruno David Gallery gave Reay his first solo exhibition, Metamorphosis, in May 2011, pairing a temporary version of his studio with a room of finished work. Then came 1913-2013 (December 2013 – January 2014), marking the centennial of Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel; Trilogy (2019), three separate series of works; and Frederigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza (2022–23), a sculpture installation after Piero’s diptych in the Uffizi. In May 2023 he showed two new paintings at the gallery’s launch of Elizabeth Bernhardt’s book Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio. The gallery has published three catalogues of his work: Metamorphosis, Trilogy and Strats/DADADADA/Complications.

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→ Read the Trilogy catalogue

→ Read the Strats/DADADADA/Complications catalogue

→ Read the Metamorphosis catalogue

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