Installation view, ‘Charles Gaines. Numbers and Trees: The Arizona Watercolors’ Hauser & Wirth Southampton 1 July - 30 July 2023 © Charles Gaines Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Thomas Barratt

Text: Max Wiener

Charles Gaines is a man who loves his trees. Since the 1970s, it seems the conceptual artist can’t get enough of them, bending and warping our perception of perhaps one of the earth’s most mundane natural objects. But maybe this makes Gaines so important: he distorts our reality slightly, creating an artistic experience entirely unto itself. On the walls of Southampton’s Hauser & Wirth Gallery, his twelve new “Arizona’ watercolors continue us down this terrific rabbit hole, begging us to question our psyches and examine something with the most careful eye we can create. The series will open on July 1 and have a month-long engagement, giving New York beachgoers time to escape the dunes and enter the inner dwellings of their minds.

On a recent trip to Arizona, Gaines found himself inspired by the cottonwood trees that occupied the area; they would eventually serve as his muse for the series. Dating back to the 70s, first with his ‘Walnut Tree Orchard’ series, these incredible living creatures have been one of the artistic focal points for Gaines, and it is not a stretch to say that we are all benefactors of this keen vision. Nature photographers capture a tree’s beauty. Gaines asks us to look deeper and ask the whys and hows many landscape photographers do not offer. This is, truly, his genius coming to the forefront.

Gaines’ art (the individual pieces of art themselves) offers their own little experience; you don't know what to make of it at first. Each mosaic, it seems, can serve as its art piece, offering up its slice of the much larger story of the tree it's placed on. The purples and the pinks have different voices and mannerisms, working together to create the world that Gaines wants them to. This is, of course, when we are physically close to the image, and then as we move back, its full story is revealed. Only after our interpretations have been cast do they become almost obsolete, replaced by the much larger narrative that the watercolor has. He has us second-guessing our second guesses in a matter of minutes.

Gaines’ manipulation of color is tremendous in this series and shows his mastery of the subject. We’re not overwhelmed by the various primaries and secondaries on the canvas but rather soothed by their presence. He does a beautiful job of blending them to the point, each color supplementing the other in the best way imaginable. It’s a jamboree of expression and joy, and it all adds to the splendor of this series. Viewers leave feeling enveloped in joy, their minds full from the hearty serving of crafty genius they have just been served. It’s something that a man like Gaines has cooked up time and time again.

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