Another exhibition dealing with the subject of contemporary portraiture, and the first showing in the UK of the work of African-American artist Charles Gaines. Like the works of Frank Auerbach and Tony Bevan in my last post, Gaines adopts a conceptual approach to the genre of portraiture, but forsakes a repertoire of painterly techniques and aesthetics for a rigorously controlled mapping system. Gaines began his 'Faces' series in 1978, and in the works here he creates an amalgam of various faces in one artwork. With these works he investigates the concept of multi-racial/ethnic indentity, by inviting people who believe they are such to become a part of the project and then questioning concepts of genetics, heredity, genealogy and lineage. Each face is photographed in black and white, and forms the back panel of each artwork. The faces are then overlapped and mapped according to the contour lines by two colours. This mapping and merging subsequently creates different patterns and colour effects defining the differences between each face. Each individual coloured square of Gaines' facial maps is assigned a number creating a pixellated facial portrait quite similar in some ways to the squared-up grid portraits of Chuck Close. Seen up close the colours and numbers of Gaines' system, attributing a number to each tiny square is reminiscent to my eyes of the periodic tables laying down the various chemical elements used by the scientific community.
A sideways glimpse behind the pixellated, painted grids on the plexiglass facade, to the large black and white portrait photographs of the subjects which form the backdrop of the portraits.
Having taken in the portraits, I then moved to Hauser & Wirth's next door space to take in the trees that comprise 'Numbers and Trees: London Series 1'. Apparently trees have been central to Gaines' work since the 1970s, and the development of the Tree series here began with visits to see English trees in a variety of gardens and forests before settling on those of Melbury, Dorset in 2020 before the lockdown. He plots each London tree by assigning it a particular colour and a numbered grid reflecting the the full form of the tree displayed in the detail photograph forming the back panel of each work. Each successive work is realised by overlaying the forms of trees one at a time and in progression, following Gaines' systematic sequencing process. These works call into question both the objective nature of the trees within them, and the subjective natural and material human actions that surround them. I think I prefer the tree series to the portraits. I like the fact that areas of the black and white photographs forming the base of each work is still visible and not completely obscurred by the mapping process as in the portraits. I feel the visible photographic backdrop makes for an interesting layered effect contrasting with the colourful, painted pixels of the grid map which appears to float above it. It's such a shame that Gaines' first solo show on these shores was subject to long period of closure (despite being available online), because of the pandemic. These works deserve a wider viewing in person in order to appreciate the colourful nuances contained in Gaines' specific mapping method.
