4 of 5 Shortlisted Summer Shows in Paris for Collectors - Charles Gaines
5. Charles Gaines · Ciphering African Acacias and Supreme Court Decisions
Hauser & Wirth, Paris · 10 June – 26 September 2026
Charles Gaines (b. 1944, Charleston, South Carolina) was one of the few African-American conceptual artists working in the 1970s and perhaps also the only one known to deal with the topics of race and politics with abstraction and a non-didactic approach starting from the 70s.
Gaines’ work has an unspoken intellectual allure, but deciphering the numbers embedded in different layers of colors - which seems to imply some sort of meaning and logic - with the naked eye and mental capability at first encounter is almost impossible.
Over the past five decades, Gaines has developed one of the most rigorous and intellectually sustained conceptual practices in American art. His signature method - marking numbers in ink on a grid, with each drawing built upon the calculations of the one before it - began with the series Regression (1973–74). He adopted this system to explore the complex relationship between perception and meaning, a line of inquiry he has pursued ever since. We can see the brilliant maturity of this body of work being on display, which entered in its fifth decade, with an alluring visual complexity and a highly intelligent conceptual depth.
His practice engages formulas and systems that question the relationship between the empirical objective (e.g. the numeric systems he employs) and the viewer's subjective response. At the core of this approach is a radical thesis: that a work of art does not need to originate in the artist's intention in order to carry profound meaning.
In this exhibition, two interconnected bodies of work were on display. The first comprised nine new Plexiglas works from the Numbers and Trees series - a project initiated in 1986 in which Gaines photographs trees and then overlays the images with a precise numbered grid, hand-painting the silhouette of the tree within the grid structure. For this new series, the subject was acacia trees, based on photographs shot during a trip to Tanzania in 2023, and the perspective shifts from the preceding Tanzania series: here, Gaines looks up at the canopy from beneath, alternating between photographic and painted backgrounds.
The second body of work, Manifestos 7 (2026), is the latest chapter in a series begun in 2008 in which Gaines draws upon texts of historical authority and subjects them to his rule-based system. Here, the subject is the law itself: two landmark US Supreme Court rulings, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) - which established the "separate but equal" doctrine - and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which overturned it.
In subjecting these rulings to his musical and mathematical systems, Gaines brings together the rational structures of music notation with the irrationality of racial violence and social injustice, producing something that is simultaneously analytical and morally devastating. A single shared system applied to two texts separated by fifty-eight years and the full weight of American racial history.
Caines’ "radically rational" approach allows him to address race and identity with intellectual rigor, freeing his work from the limits of direct representation and sidestepping the well-worn debates that so often surround discussions of Black history and identity.
Collector note: Gaines is a pivotal bridge figure between the early conceptualists of the 1960s and 1970s and subsequent generations who have pushed the limits of conceptualism. His institutional standing is substantial and his market, historically focused in the United States, will likely be extended internationally with this Paris debut.
- reviewed by Hilary Tsui, Founder CityTransit Arts | Art Advisor & Curator
Images:
Charles Gaines, Numbers and Trees: Tanzania Series 3, Acacia, Tree #6, Burungi, 2026. Acrylic sheet, acrylic paint, photograph, 121.9 x 198.1 x 14.6 cm.
Image: © Charles Gaines. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Hilary TsuiNumbers and Trees: Tanzania Series 3, Acacia, Tree #9, Pare 2026. Acrylic sheet, acrylic paint, photograph, 3 parts, 230.5 x 374 x 14.6 cm
Image: © Charles Gaines. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Fredrik NilsenCharles Gaines, Numbers and Trees: Tanzania Series 3, Acacia, Tree #4, Kabwa (detail), 2026. Acrylic sheet, acrylic paint, photograph, 121.9 x 198.1 x 14.6 cm
Image: © Charles Gaines. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Fredrik NilsenCharles Gaines, Manifestos 7, 2026. Single-channel video (color, sound, 27 minutes 34 seconds)
Five ink and graphite drawings on paper, projected video, two speakers, hanging speaker shelves, Installation dimensions variable
Image: © Charles Gaines. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen
