RAY CAESAR EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
New Work… Sneak Peek… Demimonde, 2022 Digital Ultrachrome on Archival Paper 24 x 40" Image Courtesy of Ray Caesar/Gallery House
Ray Caesar is an internationally renowned digital artist from Toronto, Canada. His surreal works blend aspects of classic paintings and 20th century photography with modern technology and computer-generated imagery. The results are unique pieces that are both visually striking and thought-provoking.
Ceasar’s works often explore themes of the human condition, from both a physical and psychological standpoint. His pieces often feature iconic figures with a slight twist, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. His works also feature a range of female characters, exploring themes of identity, self-discovery, and transformation.
“I believe we are all very creative and we need to allow ourselves to create fearlessly. ”
Since you were a kid, you have been approaching creativity in an "atypical" way. What have been some of the benefits and drawbacks from having this instinct to explore beyond traditional boundaries?
I think from a very young age I used images as a way to store unpleasant memories and experiences and to draw a window into a world of my own making that was safe and calmer than the chaotic family I was born into. I tend to use images in the same way a writer may use a diary and once that difficulty is put from pen to paper, I can relax and function as the emotion is safely stored away. My work has always been a form of self-portrait and I use art and archetypes as a way to present my gender variance in the form of a spiritual self-image.
When I think of artists from the past, I rarely think of their personal physical image or their gender or anything about them other than what they created. I feel their work as an emotional impression of who they are, and their work speaks for them through the centuries like a flavour or odour …their work becomes them. It has always been my hope and my intention that when people think of me, they see my work instead, and in the same way…. I become my work.
Elysian Fields, 2021, 18" x 36", Digital Ultrachrome On Archival Paper On Panel Framed One Of a Kind, Image Courtesy of Ray Caesar/Gallery House
Exploring the depths of an altered reality has become a key part of the creative process for you. Through three-dimensional modelling software, you are able to sculpt models in a simulated world. But does immersing yourself into these alternative universes have any effect on the real world? Do you feel more connected to this other realm than the physical one?
I grew up the youngest in a very challenging volatile and violent family in south London in the UK. I developed what I would call an “alternate dissociated reality” as well as alternate aspects of my personality that have at times been a little precarious. For as long as I can remember I have had another place I can go to in my head and I can spend a great deal of time in this “other Reality”. Sometimes I get a bit lost and go into a state of fugue or lost time or perhaps irritating wasted time. Being able to create and build a digital three-dimensional image of specific personas or alters and even animate them has led me to see them with more clarity and create a visual map of something I can hold on to. If my life is like a house with many rooms and occupants, I now know the lay of the land and how to navigate its hidden secret alcoves and passages. Living in a self-constructed paracosm can be problematic but learning to mirror that world in a digital virtual space brings my inner subconscious world kicking and screaming into this so-called real world and its quite convenient for me that people see that as Art.
That Which Is Remembered to Me, 2021, 22" x 30" Digital Ultrachrome on Archival Paper Edition of 20 - Also available as one of a kind measuring 24 x 24" Digital Ultrachrome on Panel with Varnish - One of a Kind, Image Courtesy of Ray Caesar/Gallery House
After dedicating so much time to working in a children's hospital, it's clear that your career path was both challenging and rewarding. How has this impactful experience influenced the way that your approach your art?
In 1979 I fell into working in a medical art and photography department of The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto by mistake. It was at the cusp of the computer age, and I was 21 years old. I originally studied Architecture but during the recession in the early 80s nothing was being built and getting any kind of position was difficult. I only remember an interview for a job I didn’t really want and had no voice to say No! when it was offered. I got the job because I could draw and draft, use an airbrush ( popular tool back then ) and I knew photography and a lot about computer graphics which was very rare at that time. A few days later I was sorting through the tubing and massive machinery surrounding a tiny premature infant. My first assignment was to make a technical diagram of all that equipment into a visual teaching aid for intensive care nurses as it was a tangle of tubes and wires and devices with a tiny struggling life in the center of it all. I often imagine that tiny infant as an adult in their 40s and I pass them on the street every day without knowing.
Our department also photographically documented all kinds of suspected child abuse and I had to prepare documentation for court cases and create sensitive covered presentations which were very difficult for me. I also had to make flow diagrams of research equipment used on research animals which tore me apart. I even did some of the earliest computer digital 3D animation for the department of surgery. I remember working on the cryogenic removal of a brain tumour which I did digitally on an early Apple II and Mac128K computers the surgeon presented it at a conference, and we worked on him flipping through the slides fast enough to animate them like a flipbook. I created board games and visual aids and diagnostic tools for the department of psychology, and I made tens of thousands of charts and graphs and even used the very first version of photoshop and even the first black-and-white pixel-based 3d software.
Each night I would come home and draw the most troubling aspects of my day and then put those drawings away in a closet and only then could I sleep. I know for a certainty those years forced me to confront my own childhood of abuse and neglect. In my dreams, I am often back in the hallways of that old hospital as that time is now part of a gentle personal haunting memory that has embedded itself into my subconscious in a fundamental way. I say in my biography that “I now live my life and my dreams for those that didn’t have a chance to live theirs” ….and I think of that challenge to myself every single day.
N.8th St, 2021, 30" x 36", Digital Ultrachrome On Archival Paper Edition of 20, Image Courtesy of Ray Caesar/Gallery House
“The creative process has an inherent series of choices that are ephemeral and as fragile as tissue, but I believe you can’t truly have fun unless you let yourself make mistakes and then look back on those mistakes sympathetically. ”
In my experience as a psychotherapist, I am continually amazed at how creative expression can help restore mental health. How has the use of art and other forms of creativity positively impacted your overall well-being?
As I entered midlife my past caught up with me and I spent ten long hard years in psychotherapy for childhood trauma of abuse and neglect. I have struggled most of my life with dissociative identity disorder, panic disorder and complex issues of gender, but most importantly in therapy, I learned the amazing ability to be able to “vent” and simply have a voice. I didn’t learn to say the word “No” until very late in life and it is still difficult to allow myself to utter that simple word. Therapy has led me to become gradually more self-aware and somehow was able to introduce me to my …self! I will be forever thankful for that.
I believe we are all very creative and we need to allow ourselves to create fearlessly. I love that children create without any thought of what others think, they sit in the sun and talk to themselves about an imagined story as they invent an entire world with a few simple toys. I make that part of my practice every day, to simply play with ideas and let them evolve and not worry about something being good or bad. The creative process has an inherent series of choices that are ephemeral and as fragile as tissue, but I believe you can’t truly have fun unless you let yourself make mistakes and then look back on those mistakes sympathetically. Sometimes those mistakes become something wonderful and often open a door into an unusual room of infinite possibility…………. and inside this room, you will find ten more doors.
The Quiet Room, 2020, 36"x 50" Edition of 5, Image Courtesy of Ray Caesar/Gallery House
How has your navigation through the pandemic impacted you creatively?
For many people, the last few years have been about the pandemic but for my wife Jane and I, the last 4 years have been about being primary caregivers to her 91-year-old mother with severe dementia and her 93-year-old father who passed away from stomach cancer a few years ago. Her mother’s dementia progressed rapidly, and It’s been a very difficult journey caring for someone at home that should have really been in long-term care but that wasn’t an option during the pandemic. I can also say it has been an amazing and deeply rewarding experience too as I have known my mother-in-law since I was 15 years old and that was 50 years ago, and I love and care for her very much. I haven’t fully disseminated how this has affected my work, but I know on a very deep subconscious level it has in a profound way. I think the experience is still happening so I might understand how it all connects much later…that’s the way it is with me as I generally operate on instinct with the certainty that it will be all right in the end …and if it isn’t all right … it’s not the end.
You continue to feel inspired to create new bodies of work. What is next for you on your creative journey?
I work each day with my wife Jane Nagai and with Belinda Chun of Gallery House of Toronto as we do all this together like a small company of souls sailing a ship through rough and calm seas. I am simply the tailor in the backroom embroidering and sewing the sails and Jane is the Bosun keeping the crew in line and Belinda is up on the poop deck looking through a telescope into the future. I wouldn’t be able to do all this without them and they are just as much a part of this work as I am. We will be having a group show in mid-November at Gallery House in Toronto and then a show in London UK at James Freeman Gallery in March of 2023.
People can find my work at Gallery House in Toronto and in Amsterdam at the KochXbos Gallery and in Rome at Dorothy Circus Gallery also in Tokyo at Tomura Lee Gallery and at Animazing Gallery in Las Vegas in the Venetian Hotel.