{"product_id":"charles-gaines-retrospective-1979-1991-lavignes-bastille-paris-1991","title":"CHARLES GAINES — Rétrospective, 1979–1991, Lavignes-Bastille, Paris, 1991","description":"\u003cp\u003eIssued for the opening of \u003cem\u003eCharles Gaines: Rétrospective, 1979–1991\u003c\/em\u003e, Lavignes-Bastille, 27 rue de Charonne, Paris, 14 May–13 June 1991, with vernissage on Tuesday 14 May 1991, 15:00–21:00. Single printed invitation card, 10.5 × 15.5 cm; colour reproduction to recto, exhibition details to verso. Accompanied by a catalogue co-published with Leo Castelli, John Weber and Dorothy Goldeen, with an essay by Kirby Gookin.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis invitation catches Charles Gaines in an unusually revealing position: established enough for a twelve-year retrospective assembled across an international network of major galleries, yet still more than two decades away from the institutional reassessment that would fully reposition his early work within the history of Conceptual Art.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe story begins with the grid. In the early 1970s Gaines abandoned expressionistic painting for rule-based procedures — numbers, sequences and predetermined systems that could generate an image without relying on the mythology of artistic intuition. By \u003cem\u003eWalnut Tree Orchard\u003c\/em\u003e in 1975, a photographed tree could be translated into coordinates and marks on graph paper: nature passed through information and returned as an image whose appearance was determined by a system. In 1986, Gaines began the \u003cem\u003eNumbers and Trees\u003c\/em\u003e works that would become one of the central structures of his practice. Tree silhouettes were mapped onto grids and built through colour, numbers, photography and layers of Plexiglas. The system appears rational; what emerges from it can be unexpectedly lush.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat tension is sitting directly on the front of this invitation. The card identifies the reproduced work as \u003cem\u003eNumbers and Trees, 1989, #4 “Animal”\u003c\/em\u003e. A red-and-green tree seems to vibrate inside a transparent gridded box, simultaneously organic and processed. Look quickly and it is a tree. Look longer and the image begins breaking into coordinates, colour units, surface and information. Nature enters the grid without quite surrendering to it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLavignes-Bastille had already shown Gaines in Paris in 1988. Three years later, the gallery returned with something more definitive: the survey circulated between Paris, New York and Santa Monica — four galleries effectively pooling their histories with Gaines into one retrospective proposition. During the 1980s Gaines had exhibited repeatedly with both Leo Castelli and John Weber, two names deeply embedded in the history of American Minimal and Conceptual Art. Yet when the Studio Museum in Harlem organised \u003cem\u003eCharles Gaines: Gridwork 1974–1989\u003c\/em\u003e in 2014, it described the exhibition as the first museum survey of his early work. The galleries already knew. The museums would catch up later.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe invitation makes that history beautifully compact. On one side: the work — tree, colour, grid, Plexiglas, system. On the other: another system — artist, retrospective, dates, catalogue, four galleries, Paris address. The front processes nature. The back processes the artist. It is not merely advertising a Charles Gaines exhibition. It records the machinery through which a career was being assembled into history: twelve years selected, titled “Retrospective,” published, circulated between galleries and sent into the world on a piece of card.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCondition: good vintage; light handling, gentle age toning and minor corner\/edge wear consistent with period exhibition ephemera. Securely packed; tracked UK and international shipping available.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lavignes-Bastille","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54257750868306,"sku":"GAINES-LAVIGNES-INV-1991","price":95.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/5636\/1554\/files\/Gaines_Charles.Showinvite_retrospective_.1991.jpg?v=1786685798","url":"https:\/\/thenewrare.com\/products\/charles-gaines-retrospective-1979-1991-lavignes-bastille-paris-1991","provider":"The New Rare","version":"1.0","type":"link"}