“embracing Ray because they saw he occupied a beautiful quasi place - not of the L.A. art world but in tune with it - and because he was also more truly L.A. than almost anyone, I mean in terms of beach culture, lower-middle-class white culture. Most artists here come from elsewhere. Ray is the real McCoy.”
“[It's difficult, if not impossible, to get corporate funding for an exhibition such as] Ecstasy, ... This is a show that questions boundaries, not only perceptual but social. Maybe the biggest challenge was trying to find some edgy, youth-oriented corporation that would go for it.”
“The exhibition has been in process well over three or four years, and it has gone in as many directions as there were years, ... It is far less didactic and representational than the title would imply. It is far more experiential in dealing with visual phenomena, and that's really what connects it to Los Angeles. You will see a number of younger people in the exhibition who owe a significant debt to the experiments of the Light and Space artists in the late '60s. People don't write about it now, but at the time it was very much associated with altered states of consciousness, with drug culture, expanded time. In an odd way, it does come around.”
“You have to march along and read it in this kind of experiential way, ... You can't see it unless you are right up on it, and when you are right up on it, you are lost in his mind. That is very important to him.”
“It's a metaphor for time-based, often highly reductive, early video that kind of puts you to sleep, ... You are supposed to drift off with him. It's a very funny thing. As he is falling asleep, the lights of the city are beginning to get brighter. Things run rather counter.”
