Tuesday 29 August, 5-6pm
Wednesday 30 August, 10am-6pm
In diverse and intellectually complex works, Charles Gaines (b. 1944, USA) explores the accidental, the tension between logical systems and the human hand, and the ways in which meaning is derived from art. Gaines cites John Cage as a major influence, and much of his work dwells on chance: Airplanecrash Clock (1997) is a kinetic sculpture in which a model plane repeatedly nose-dives to the ground, while text-and-photo pieces in “Absent Figures” (2000-01) record fatal mountaineering disasters on Mount Rainier in Washington. For Manifestos (2008), a collection of digital videos, musical compositions, and drawings, Gaines developed a system for translating excerpts from four revolutionary manifestos of the 20th century into musical scores, which play on speakers alongside the texts. Gaines is also interested in environmental degradation; Greenhouse (2007) is a sculptural enclosure whose lights and environmental conditions shift according to computer-generated readings of air pollution levels in California.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Numbers and Trees: Central Park Series II0 at Susanne Vielmetter Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Grids: Numbers and Trees III, and Palm Trees II at Max Hetzler Gallery, Paris France (2016); Numbers and Trees: Central Park Series I at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY (2016); Librettos at Manuel de Falla/Stokely Carmichael, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, CA (2015); Gridwork 1974 – 1989 at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; travelling to Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015); Notes on Social Justice at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY (2013);
Recent group exhibitions include: We Need to Talk, Petzel Gallery, New York, 2017; Active Ingredients: Prompts, Props, Performance, Williams College Museum of Art 2018; Trees in the Forest, curated by Kari Rittenbach, Yale Union, Portland, OR 2016; Nervous Systems, Haus de Kuluren der Welt, Berlin, Germany 2016; California 101: Art from the Collection, AD&A Museum UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 2016; Rhona Hoffman 40 Years, Part 1, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL 2016; Performing the Grid, Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College, Los Angeles, CA 2016; From Minimalism to Algorithm, The Kitchen, New York, NY 2016; Drawing Dialogues: The Sol LeWitt Collection, The Drawing Center, NY 2016