Works

Press Release

Take Ninagawa is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Man Ray, bringing together chess-related objects, rayographs, paintings, sculptures, and other works.

Often regarded primarily as a photographer, Man Ray worked across painting, sculpture, objects, film, and photography. The recent exhibition Man Ray: When Objects Dream at The Metropolitan Museum of Art situated the rayograph within this expansive practice, foregrounding the central role of objects in his work. Building on this renewed attention and recent scholarship on Man Ray and chess, this exhibition considers chess as a generative structure in his practice. For Man Ray, chess was more than a game or subject: it offered a field of multiple moves and directions, where order met surprise and violence intertwined with sex.

On view are chess-related works including Giant Chess Set (1961), a monumental, playable work used by Man Ray himself, alongside rayographs, paintings, sculptures and other works. Together, they present Man Ray as an artist whose practice continually crossed the boundaries between objects, images, and media.