Charles Gaines, 2022 ©️ Charles Gaines. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen; Photo of Olga Viso by Airi Katsuta, Courtesy of the Phoenix Art Museum.

In Conversation: Charles Gaines & Olga Viso

  • Sat 1 July 2023

To celebrate the opening of ‘Charles Gaines. Numbers and Trees: The Arizona Watercolors,’ please join us for a conversation with celebrated conceptual artist Charles Gaines and Phoenix Art Museum Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Olga Viso.

This focused exhibition of twelve new watercolors provides an intimate look into the systems and processes used by the artist for his acclaimed and ever-evolving ‘Numbers and Trees’ series. Trees have been a central motif in Gaines’s distinguished practice since he first began his ‘Walnut Tree Orchard’ series in the 1970s and his methodical examination of their form continues in this series inspired by cottonwood trees he photographed on a recent trip to Arizona.

This event is free, however, due to limited space, reservations are required.

Click here to register.

About Charles Gaines
A pivotal figure in the field of Conceptual Art, Charles Gaines’ body of work engages formulas and systems that interrogate relationships between the objective and the subjective realms. Using a generative approach to create 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.

About Olga Viso
Olga Viso is a curator, writer, contemporary art historian. Based in the Phoenix Valley of Arizona since 2018, she is the Selig Family Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Phoenix Art Museum. She is also Senior Advisor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where develops arts and museum partnerships for the university. Viso was previously the Executive Director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Director/Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. She is a scholar of contemporary and Latin American Art with a focus on the contemporary art of Cuba.

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