A pivotal figure in the field of conceptual art, Charles Gaines’s 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. Gaines lives and works in Los Angeles. He recently retired from the CalArts School of Art, where he was on faculty for over 30 years and established a fellowship to provide critical scholarship support for Black students in the M.F.A. program.

His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and around the world, most notably a major survey at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2023), which traveled to the Phoenix Art Museum (2024); a museum survey of early works at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2014) and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015); a mid-career survey at the Pomona College Museum of Art and the Pitzer College Art Gallery in Claremont, CA (2012); and presentations at the Whitney Biennial, New York (1975) and the Venice Biennale, Italy (2007 and 2015).

An exhibition of his work is also currently on long-term view at Dia:Beacon in New York. Gaines has been recently commissioned to create large-scale permanent public works for Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, Montgomery, AL (2025); Culver City, CA (forthcoming 2026); and Intuit Dome, Inglewood, CA (forthcoming 2026). Gaines has published several essays on contemporary art, including Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism (University of California, Irvine, 1993; reprint 2024) and The New Cosmopolitanism(California State University, Fullerton, 2008). His collected writings will be published by Hauser & Wirth in 2026. 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. In 2023, he received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.