Voices: Charles Gaines

Voices: Charles Gaines

Thurs. Oct 18, 6pm / Gallery 400 Lecture Room

SYSTEMS, STRUCTURES, AND THE POLITICS OF SUBJECTIVITY

In this artist talk, Charles Gaines covers a survey of his artwork, from his early work in systems and numerals to his most recent work with language and representation. Gaines discusses ways the work rethinks notions of subjectivity and its manifestation in works of art. Although both share the characteristic of indeterminacy, Gaines describes the fine difference between chance and arbitrary judgments on the one hand and expressive, intuitional judgments on the other, illuminating how works of art can uniquely interrogate this difference.

Highly regarded as both a leading practitioner of conceptualism and an influential educator at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles-based artist Charles Gaines (American, b. 1944) is celebrated for his works on paper and acrylic glass, photographs, drawings, musical compositions, and installations that investigate how rule-based procedures influence representation and construct meaning. He has had over 80 one-person shows and several hundred group exhibitions in the US and abroad including the 2007 and 2015 Biennale di Venezia. In 2015, he presented a critically acclaimed retrospective exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Hammer Museum.

(image credit: Walnut Tree Orchard: Set 4 (v2), 1975-2014, Mechanical pen on paper, photo 29 x 23" [HxW] (73.66 x 58.42 cm); Framed 3,134 x 112 x 2,512" [HxWxD] (7,960.36 x 284.48 x 6,380.48 cm), Photo by Stephen Probert