Exhibition, talk features influential artist Charles Gaines '67
Fredrik Nilsen
Charles Gaines, pictured here working in his studio, was awarded the prestigious Edward MacDowell Medal in 2019 as an American artist who made an "outstanding contribution to the national culture."
A pivotal figure in the field of conceptual art, Charles Gaines ’67 MFA is an artist, theorist, and teacher whose body of work engages formulas and systems that interrogate relationships between the objective and the subjective realms.
Using a generative approach to create works in series across a variety of mediums, he has built a bridge between the early conceptual artists of the 1960s and 1970s and subsequent generations of artists pushing the limits of conceptualism today.
Gaines’ upcoming exhibition in RIT’s University Gallery traces a loose arc of his career and illustrates his sustained interest in the lyrical potential of logical systems. On view March 16-April 10, it features printmaking, drawing, and an early painting that has not been seen by the public in more 50 years.
Curated by Ellen Tani, assistant professor of art history, and programmed in collaboration with John Aäsp, gallery director for RIT’s College of Art and Design, this exhibition is part of a multi-venue celebration of Gaines’s work that includes Memorial Art Gallery and Visual Studies Workshop. It is the first exhibition in RIT’s history to honor the work of this notable alumnus. Tani’s forthcoming book, Charles Gaines: Black Conceptualism and the Poetics of Systems, will be the first academic monograph on the artist.
Gaines is set to give a companion artist talk at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 26, at Memorial Art Gallery. A free RIT shuttle is available to transport the RIT community to and from the event. The film In Dialogue: Collaborations with Charles Gaines will also screen at 7 p.m. Friday, March 27, at Visual Studies Workshop.
© Charles Gaines/courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth/photo by: Marco Giannavola
Born in 1944 in Charleston, S.C., Gaines began his career as a painter, earning his MFA at RIT in 1967. In the 1970s, Gaines’s art shifted dramatically when he explored the use of mathematical and numeric systems as tools for generating form, later using a system of transposition to plot photographic forms from the natural world onto a grid. The resulting lyrical plays of form and color demonstrate a mode of information processing that embraces indeterminacy rather than logic.
A longtime faculty member at Fresno State University (1968-89) and CalArts (1990-2022), Gaines has taught generations of contemporary artists. In 2019, Gaines received the 60th Edward MacDowell Medal. He was inducted into the National Academy of Design’s 2020 class of National Academicians and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2022. In 2023, he received an honorary doctorate from RIT. An edited volume of his writings will be published this year.
Artworks in the exhibition are generously lent by Deborah Ronnen, Caitlin and Benn Kireker, Paul Garland ’67 MFA and Anna Hallinen-Garland, the Benjamin Wigfall Estate/Dolan Maxwell Gallery, and Charles Gaines Studio.
This exhibition and artist talk are made possible by RIT’s Anna Ballarian Visiting Artist Series, the College of Art and Design, Memorial Art Gallery, and Charles Gaines Studio.
