Join us for a preview performance of ‘Manifestos 7’ (2025), composed by noted American artist Charles Gaines, on the occasion of his West Hollywood exhibition, ‘Charles Gaines. Numbers and Trees, The Tanzania Baobabs.’ The performance will take place within the exhibition space.  

This preview performance builds upon Charles Gaines' Manifestos series, in which he disarms and draws upon historical texts, uniting the rational, mathematical, and lyrical structures of music with the irrationality of violence, racial tensions, and social injustice. In ‘Manifestos 7,’ the artist examines the rulings from two landmark US Supreme Court cases: Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The first case set the "separate but equal" precedent and the second overturned it, bookending a period of legalized segregation in the United States.

Previous performances from the Manifestos series have taken place at the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix AZ; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; REDCAT, Los Angeles CA; and The Village Vanguard, New York NY.  

Program
‘Manifestos 7’ (2025)
Composer and Arranger: Charles Gaines
Co-Arranger: John Eagle
Music Direction: John Eagle
Producer: Mads Falcone
Duration: 30 – 35 minutes
Followed by a discussion with Charles Gaines and John Eagle

This event is free, however, reservations are recommended. Click here to register.

About Charles Gaines 
A pivotal figure in the field of conceptual art, Charles Gaines’ body of work engages formulas and systems that interrogate relationships between the objective and the subjective realms. Using a generative approach to create a series of works in 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. 

Born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1944, Gaines currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and around the world, most notably a major traveling survey at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami and the Phoenix Art Museum; a mid-career survey at the Pomona College Museum of Art and the Pitzer College Art Gallery in Claremont CA; a museum survey of early works at The Studio Museum, Harlem NY and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA; and presentations at the 1975 Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale in 2007 and 2015. An exhibition of his work is also currently on long-term view at Dia:Beacon in New York. In 2022, Gaines launched his most ambitious public art project yet, ‘The American Manifest,’ presented by Creative Time, Governors Island and Times Square Arts. The third and final chapter of ‘The American Manifest,’ organized by Creative Time, will travel to the banks of the Ohio River later this year. Additional forthcoming public commissions include the mural ‘Numbers and Trees: Cincinnati Cottonwoods,’ organized by Cincinnati nonprofit ArtWorks (2025); ‘Hanging Tree’ at Equal Justice Initiative’s Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery AL (2025); and a work for the Intuit Dome in Inglewood CA (spring 2026). Gaines was an artist-in-residence at Hauser & Wirth Somerset in spring 2025 and a book of his collected writings will be released by Hauser & Wirth Publishers in spring 2026. 

In addition to his artistic practice, Gaines was on the faculty at CalArts School of Art for over 30 years, establishing a fellowship to provide critical scholarship support for Black students in the M.F.A. Art program. He has published several essays on contemporary art, including ‘Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism’ (University of California, Irvine, 1993) and ‘The New Cosmopolitanism’ (California State University, Fullerton, 2008). 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.   

Gaines’ work is included in prominent public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY; The Studio Museum, Harlem NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago IL; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA; and Tate, London, UK.