[Fall 2026]
Man Ray, When Objects Dream
By Ji-Yoon Han
[EXCERPT]
This exhibition was a true event – despite its idyllic title, which evoked the polar opposite of the hideous reality into which we seem to sink further every day. At a time when private donations are so influential that they seem to hold sway over art institutions (in fact, this exhibition was no exception), we must nevertheless rejoice in the intelligence, elegance, and appropriateness with which Met curators Stephanie D’Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson, assisted by Micayla Bransfield, (man)handled their task.
They brought together about 160 works to narrate fifteen years of Man Ray’s experimentation with a form of cameraless photography that he developed in the 1920s and called rayography. The presentation was enhanced by Linsen Chai’s elegant exhibition design, which invited visitors to enter an architectural transposition of the bellows of a camera obscura.
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[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 133 – INTIMACIES ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here : Man Ray, When Objects Dream ]
Ji-Yoon Han, an independent exhibition curator and researcher, holds a doctorate in art history with a specialization in surrealism, photography, and visual studies. From 2021 to 2024, she was a research associate for the project Photographie et commande at the Musée national d’art moderne à Paris, with the support of the Amis du Centre Pompidou.