Since 1995 Charles Gaines has focused on the postmodern sublime and metonymy to make art that combines drawn or photographic images with text. Drawing from an array of literary sources, especially arguments challenging conventional ideas about meaning in art and its relationship to aesthetic experience, he made these ideas the basis of his work. His art began to address the irreconcilable opposition, in classical theory, between the conditions of feelings (beauty) and the conditions of culture (sublimity), which negate each other in the same experience. Gaines had his first show in New York City in 1972, and since then he has had more than fifty solo exhibitions and has participated in several hundred group shows throughout the United States and Europe. T.G.
Portrait photo courtesy Charles Gaines Greenhouse, 2003–7, mixed media installation, 76 x 145.5 x 98 in; photo courtesy LA><ART and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
“I have learned how difficult it is to maintain financial security as an artist, even for some of our most celebrated, successful artists, and how few Americans appreciate that art comes from artists.”
—Diane Kaplan, USA Board Member; President, Rasmuson Foundation
