Manta Ray

Since the late 1960s, William Leavitt has produced sculptural tableaux, works on paper, and performances that draw upon and embrace the blurred lines between real and fake that characterizes much of Southern California culture. The artist’s installations evoke a “theater of the ordinary,” quoting strangely familiar locations such as soap-opera sets, furniture showrooms, and suburban interiors. These constructions—always empty and pur- posefully incomplete—summon recognizable spaces but are also evidently artificial. The objects in Manta Ray are like characters in a play, ripe with potential. Leavitt has explained that in these works he is “trying to frame some story through an object or a painting or a situation that would lend itself to further narrative.