Mens Suits: press coverage

The Daily Telegraph, 18 July 2009

Grafik, April 2009:
"LeDray's work is familiar. It's like something we have seen or worn, but on a different scale. Much smaller than life-size, the pieces have a quiet. arresting presence. 'Art comes in all shapes and sizes. All my work is the actual size it needs to be,' explains LeDray. His installations and small sculptures serve as emotional touchstones for the viewer as the artist's work is regarded as a commentary on a society that is too busy to care for itself." (Hywel Davies)

Domus (Italy), April 2009:
It is not clear which men LeDray is referring to, only that worn-out, second-hand clothes are being used to represent them. Every fold tells a story - about a period of life lived and now finished but one that insists on reclaiming at least some attention even after being used for something else. The states of mind that emerge from them, like modesty, exuberance, humour, seriousness, impetuousness and sweetness, in the absence of a human presence, depend solely on these non-essential things. They are transformed into attitudes, and as such take turns in suggesting diverse and simultaneous interpretations for the work." (Michele Robecchi)

Financial Times, 11 July 2009:
"The melancholy deepens when we reach the last ensemble. Coats and jackets are now hung in straight lines, and they soon give way to rows of empty hangers - one of which is forlornly inscribed 'We Love Our Customers'. Nobody, however, loves these garments. They festoon a small step-ladder and an ironing board but now neatness has given way to disorder. Three bags, stuffed into boxes on wheels, bulge with more clothes. A solitary black sock lies mangled in the corner."

The Observer, 12 July 2009:
"I longed to rifle through the tiny racks and half expected to see a changing room of minute customers. But it was not until my eyes spotted a rail of immaculate, minuscule leather gloves that I suddenly felt light-fingered, longing to sneak a pair into my pocket...

"The scale excites tenderness, delight and a sort of pity. It is extraordinary how the clothes look old and new. Fastidiously refashioned, they wear their hopeful hearts on their sleeves. Yet they are also tired, telltale and secondhand. But what I love most is LeDray's determination to release the clothes from any need to be worn, leaving them free to have lives of their own." (Kate Kellaway - read full article)

Metro, 15 July 2009:
"These meticulously staged spaces each comprise three distinct settings suggestive of a second-hand shop: a back room where items are sorted and cleaned; front-of-shop where you'll find ties arranged in a pretty circle on a trestle table and an old-fashioned tailor's dummy draped in a suit awaiting repairs; and an area where folded and hanging items are displayed.

"Issues of value and exchange, redundancy and material desire are addressed. But what is rather more arresting is the picture of nostalgia and longing these pieces create." (Fisun Güner)

Evening Standard, 16 July 2009:
"The exactitude of his work, and the transformation of scale, create an intensely symbolic atmosphere. It's a strikingly original, frankly unmissable work of art that uses clothing to construct an existentialist meditation on identity, individuality and mass society. In the past, collections have been used to evoke the Holocaust; there are too many Hawaiian shirts for that. These aren't your typical gladrags: LeDray's fashion style is bold and eccentric; it's all about showing your personality through what you wear. It nods in the direction of Comme des Garçons with its mismatched and loud fabrics, but LeDray is an artist, not a designer. He uses pattern as abstract painters use paint, constructing a little masterpiece of colour with one outfit on an old-fashioned tailor's dummy - a clash of checks and tartans between jacket, trousers, tie, shirt and pocket handkerchief.

"No detail has been left to chance. A low ceiling of miniaturised polystyrene tiles hangs over the interiors, which are lit by panels of neon lights, some of which have an orange glow, as if they are old and worn out. On the top of this ceiling LeDray has carefully arranged large amounts of grey dust, thereby contrasting the cleanliness and order of pressed clothes for sale with the chaos and filth which gathers, wherever it can, just out of reach. This is also, finally, the thrift shop as memento mori." (Ben Lewis - read full article)

The Daily Telegraph, 18 July 2009:
"A pall of sadness hangs over Mens Suits. Unwanted clothing stands in for lost lives and failed dreams. Pay attention, too, to LeDray’s unerring sense of design. Step back and you’ll see how he uses the shape, colour and texture of the ladder, ironing board, wooden palettes and cloth laundry trolleys as formal elements in his compositions, balancing vertical lines with horizontals, and rhyming diagonals in one corner with those in another. Accents of colour punctuate each immensely satisfying composition.

"LeDray’s work has been compared to that of contemporaries such as Robert Gober and Mike Kelley, but although I can see many areas in which these artists share an interest in common themes, like social and economic class, for me the most helpful context in which to view him is as the heir to American realist artists of the Depression era. Though he never represents the human figure, the world he shows us is the city life that Reginald Marsh would have recognised. He looks with infinite compassion on the belongings of the dispossessed and the down and out, the downside of the American dream." (Richard Dorment - read full article)

The London Review of Books, 6 August 2009:
"Mens Suits is at first glance an example of a decorative genre. But the clutter begins to say other things. Here, in miniature, is one aspect of the cacophonous visual abundance that surrounds us. Richness and variety were once the prerogative of the wealthy. Simplicity and the exquisitely minimal are now more likely to be their choice - unless they're Russian. Mens Suits shows the thrift shop helping the rest on their way from richer to poorer - a descent occasionally reversed when an eddy of retro-taste carries an item back to the surface...

"...To think about which of LeDray's many-coloured coats you might choose puts you in touch with a uniquely human anxiety, the phrase that makes sense only to the human animal: 'What shall I wear today'" (Peter Campbell - read full article)