Swedish-born American sculptor Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022) is renowned for his innovative and humorous reconstructions of everyday objects in both large-scale public installations and soft materials. Involved with Happenings and Performance art in NYC in the 1950s, in 1961 Oldenburg opened The Store. Recreating the environment of neighborhood shops in his studio, Oldenburg displayed familiar objects made out of plaster. This commentary on American society's celebration of consumption soon heralded Oldenburg as a Pop artist with the emergence of the movement in 1962. 

“Because my work is naturally non-meaningful, the meaning found in it will remain doubtful and inconsistent—which is the way it should be...All that I care about is that, like any startling piece of nature, it should be capable of stimulating meaning.” ______ Claes Oldenburg

“...the Ray Gun stands for vision, the power of ‘seeing through walls,’ i.e. the artist's supposed capacity to discover reality. The slogan connected with it is: ‘Annihilate, illuminate,’ or be transformed by revelation, knowledge. The Ray Gun Wing is a celebration of the right angle form and the repeated discovery of that form in all sorts of vague objects in a variety of materials.”______Judith Russi Kirshner, Claes Oldenburg/Mouse Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

These photographs were taken for the graphic designer Hans Kung (NYC) for a proposed book on Oldenburg's Ray Guns.