Opening Reception
10 June, 6 – 8 pm
For over five decades, pioneering conceptual artist Charles Gaines has used systems to create series of works that mine the complex relationship between perception and meaning. For his first exhibition at Hauser & Wirth’s Paris gallery, Gaines will debut new Plexiglas works from his Numbers and Trees series, first conceived by the artist in 1986. Focusing on acacia trees, the nine compositions are based on photographs the artist shot during a trip to Tanzania in 2023. Gaines will also debut the latest installment from his Manifestos series, developed whilst in residence at the gallery’s Somerset location in 2025.
Trees have been a central motif in Gaines’ practice since the 1970s, when he first began plotting their forms through systems of numbered grids in the Walnut Tree Orchard series (1975 – 2014). By converting the tree form into a gridded geometry, Gaines devised a distinctive process for charting and comparing differences, while also challenging the dominance of subjectivity in artistic expression.
Since 2008 across his Manifestos series, Gaines has disarmed and drawn upon historical texts, uniting the rational, mathematical and lyrical structures of music with the irrationality of violence, racial tensions and social injustice. Comprised of a new musical composition, two-channel video, and five drawings, 'Manifestos 7' (2026) examines rulings from two landmark US Supreme Court cases, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Charles Gaines will collaborate on—along with Firelei Báez and Cristina Iglesias—and contribute to a group exhibition organised by Rashid Johnson at Hauser & Wirth Menorca from June 2026. A book of Gaines’ collected writings will be released by Hauser & Wirth Publishers in spring 2027.
Sobre el artista
Charles Gaines
Figura clave en el ámbito del arte conceptual, el conjunto de obra de Charles Gaines trabaja con fórmulas y sistemas que interrogan las relaciones entre los ámbitos objetivo y subjetivo. Mediante un enfoque generativo para crear series de obras en diversos medios, Gaines ha construido un puente entre los primeros artistas conceptuales de las décadas de 1960 y 1970 y las generaciones posteriores que hoy llevan los límites del conceptualismo más allá.
Nacido en 1944 en Charleston, Carolina del Sur, Gaines comenzó su carrera como pintor, obteniendo el M.F.A. en la School of Art and Design del Rochester Institute of Technology en 1967. Durante la década de 1970, su obra experimentó un giro drástico en respuesta a lo que él mismo más tarde llamaría ‘el despertar’. Esta revelación se materializó en la serie ‘Regression’ (1973 – 1974), en la que exploró el uso de sistemas matemáticos y numéricos para crear marcas suaves numeradas con tinta sobre una cuadrícula, con cada dibujo construido a partir de los cálculos del anterior. Este enfoque metódico marcaría el recorrido del artista durante las décadas siguientes.
Current Exhibitions
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