Charles Gaines: Systems & Structures

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 a 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. Born in 1944 in Charleston, South Carolina, Gaines began his career as a painter, earning his MFA from the School of Art and Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1967.

Sadie Barnette

Sadie Barnette (b. 1984, Oakland, CA) has a BFA from CalArts and an MFA from University of California, San Diego. She has enjoyed solo exhibitions at The Kitchen, New York; Pomona College, Los Angeles and Pitzer College Art Galleries, Los Angeles; ICA Los Angeles, The Lab, San Francisco; the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; MCA San Diego; Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, PA; and the Manetti Shrem Museum, UC Davis. Barnette’s work has been included in recent exhibitions at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco; Oakland Museum of California; FotoFocus Biennial, Cincinnati, OH; and the California Biennial at Orange County Museum of Art. Her work is in the permanent collections of LACMA, CA; Brooklyn Museum; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Guggenheim Museum, NY; JP Morgan Chase Collection; Blanton Museum at UT Austin; San José Museum of Art, CA; Oakland Museum of California; the Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Walker Art Center, MN. She’s the recipient of numerous grants and residencies including the Studio Museum in Harlem, Artadia, Art Matters, Eureka Fellowship, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Camargo Foundation in France, and was the inaugural Artist Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Black Studies Collaboratory. Recent commissions include Bay Area Walls at SFMOMA and a permanent, site-specific installation at the Los Angeles International Airport is forthcoming in 2024. Barnette lives and works in Oakland, CA.

Nate Young

Nate Young (b.1981, Phoenixville, PA) lives and works in Chicago, IL. He received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA (2009) and BA in Visual Arts Education from Northwestern College, St. Paul, MN (2004). Young attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2009) and was invited back as Dean in 2015. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, School of Art & Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL (2016-present). Young’s work has been shown in selected solo and group exhibitions at the Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM (2022); Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City, IN (2022); moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2022); Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2021); Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago, IL (2021); De Pree Art Gallery, Holland, MI (2020); The Driehaus Museum, Chicago, IL (2020); Front Triennial at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH (2018); Visual Arts Center, Richmond Virginia (2017); and The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY (2012).  In 2021, Young received the Joyce Foundation Artadia Award, Chicago, IL. Young’s work is featured in the permanent collections of DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Fabric Workshop Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C, and the Mott Warsh Collection, Flint, MI.