CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/25/2020

Graphing living matter: 'Charles Gaines: Palm Trees and Other Works'

Featured spread, reproducing details of a 2019 work by west coast conceptualist Charles Gaines, is from Palm Trees and Other Works, published by Hauser & Wirth. Featuring new and historical works (including a wealth of gorgeous, close details) plus text by David Platzker and an interview by Cherise Smith, this is the most up-to-date monograph on the artist currently in print. "Whether a tree is a walnut or a palm, the basic structure of its DNA tells it how to form according to its species," Platzker writes. "Over its lifetime, forces act on and transform it—the constraints of the ground it stands on, its access to nutrients and sunlight, its vulnerability to wind and pests, its responses to other natural and human activities. Humans are similar: we too are subject to forces both natural and imposed on us through circumstances of upbringing, class, education, nationality, gender, orientation, and, what is most apparent to other humans, the color of our skin. In time we acquire physical and emotional scars that further make us unique individuals. Gaines's trees ask us to recognize how the information presented in them amalgamates—to acknowledge how they layer together. Graphing living matter, they speak not only to organic objects' own transformation and diversification but also to what happens to them in time."