
For nearly six decades, pioneering conceptual artist Charles Gaines has used systems to create series of works that mine the complex relationship between perception and meaning.
This February, following a major 2023 – 24 museum survey and an acclaimed public commission, Gaines returns to his hometown of Los Angeles to present a new series of his signature Plexiglas works and watercolours at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood. With his first LA solo exhibition since 2019, Gaines will deliver the most elaborate treatment yet of his Numbers and Trees series, combining first-time variations of his celebrated systems that culminate in explosively colourful and complex works. Consisting of nine large-scale triptychs, the new Plexiglas works are based on photographs of baobab trees that the artist shot during a trip to Tanzania in 2023. Exacting and intricate, these monumental pieces unfold in sequence, each one evolving to unravel the mystery of representation while challenging the limits of our perceptual experience. The exhibition coincides with the surveys ’Charles Gaines: 1992 – 2023’ (30 October 2024 – 9 March 2025) and ’Charles Gaines: Arizona Series’ (30 October 2024 – 20 July 2025) at the Phoenix Art Museum.

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 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.



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