...Ray's paintings, punctuated with large swaths of dense visual information, are seemingly intent on creating a hermetic space of their own, a boundless plane in which the icons are immersed and in which a one-of-its-kind event takes place, a happening that could be framed under the narrative of "Contention and Conservation."
The contention is the postmodernist contention with the past, with the clichés of painting, with familiar quotations from the history of art; and out of that, willy-nilly, conservation is accomplished. The painterly composition replete with transcendent totality can also be read as fluid material that enables fixing and safeguarding, the canvas as a trap which can capture the chaotic permutation at a crucial moment, mark the interference between the thing and color, form, line, medium. ...
Dr. Ketzia Alon
