Charles Gaines (artist)

Charles Gaines (born 1944) is an American artist whose work interrogates the discourse relating aesthetics and politics. Taking the form of drawings, photographic series and video installations, the work consistently invokes the use of systems as generative part of the artist's practice. His work is rooted in Conceptual Art and he is committed to its tenets of engaging cognition and language. There is a strong musical thread running though much of Gaines' work from evident in his repeated use of musical scores^[1] as well his engagement with the idea of indeterminacy as per John Cage.

Early life and education

Charles Gaines was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He received a B.A. from Jersey City State College in 1966, and earned his M.F.A. from School of Art and Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1967. Since 1989, Gaines been a faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts, influencing many young artists that he has taught. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Work

• Explosions
• History of Stars
• NIGHT/CRIMES
• Shadows
• Walnut Tree Orchard
• String Theory
• Manifestos
• Sound Text (2015)

Exhibitions

As of the 1980s, Charles Gaines had solo exhibitions at such galleries as Leo Castelli Gallery and John Weber^[2] Gallery in New York, as well as Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles^[3] among others. In 2006 Gaines began to exhibit with Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, and 2014 and 2016 with Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Charles Gaines participated in the 1975 Whitney Biennial of American Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

More recently, Charles Gaines was included in the 2007 Venice Biennale curated by Robert Storr, followed by a 2008 exhibition at Kent Fine Art entitled Manifestos. As part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative, Charles Gaines was featured in two prominent Los Angeles exhibitions: "Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960 – 1980," curated by Kellie Jones at the Hammer Museum and "Under the Big Black Sun: 1974-1981," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles which was curated by Paul Schimmel.

In 2012 the Pomona College Museum of Art and the Pitzer Art Gallery, Pomona and Claremont, CA exhibited "In The Shadow of Numbers, Charles Gaines Selected Works from 1975-2012"^[4] which involved a collaborative musical performance with Terry Adkins. "Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1999^[5]" is the first museum survey the artist's early work which opened at The Studio Museum in Harlem in July 2014.

Awards

Charles Gaines received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Grant in 1977. He received a California Community Foundation (CCF)^[6] in 2011, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013.

Writing

Charles Gaines has written a number of academic texts including: Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism^[7] (UC Irvine, 1993); Art, Post History and the Paradox of Black Pluralism, Merge, 12 (2004); “Reconsidering Metaphor/Metonymy: Art and the Suppression of Thought,” Art Lies, Issue 64 (Winter/2009); and “Ben Patterson: The History of Gray Matter From the Avant-Garde to the Postmodern,” a catalog essay for an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (November 2010).

Notes