Numbers and Trees:

"Having the opportunity to create a work for the Intuit Dome is very special to me because I feel as if I am being given the opportunity to contribute to a sport that has played a major role in my life as a sports fan and amateur athlete. This commission, for me is a gift."

Charles Gaines has since the 1970s investigated the tenets of conceptual art, applying mathematical formulas, grid structures, and other rational systems to explore the innate conflict between subjective and objective awareness of the world. As one of the few African American artists working in conceptual art during its inception, Gaines’s art was often by default considered political, though his insights into racial and social issues come directly from the work itself. His process for reducing the visual characteristics of a tree into a grid of colored and numbered cells, for example, could also be applied to how one depicts race or any other attribute—a system of representation that is both rational and infinitely variable. Gaines has also been prolific as a writer on philosophy and art history, and as a teacher. He lives and works in LA, and recently retired from his 30-year post on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).