Focusing on the postmodern sublime and the figure of metonymy, Charles Gaines draws on an array of sources as prods to the making of his art. In his work, he deploys arguments that resist conventional ideas about meaning in art and its relationship to aesthetic experience. He has had numerous exhibitions at such venues as the Whitney Biennial 1975 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Susanne Veilmetter Los Angeles Projects in Los Angeles, and the 2007 Venice Biennial. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Award and a United States Artists Fellowship, and he was a finalist for the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Public collections include, in New York City, MoMA, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Gaines is, in addition, a widely published writer and is on the faculty of the Program in Art at the California Institute of the Arts.
Seminar Reading: Charles Gaines. Part 2: Metaphor and Metonymy, from Semiotics to Cognitive Psychology. 2009 (.pdf)
Seminar Reading: Charles Gaines. Part 2: Metaphor and Metonymy, from Semiotics to Cognitive Psychology. 2009 (.pdf)
