Black Ghost Blues Redux

Frequently drawn to topical, politically oriented subjects, Charles Gaines makes works that are a constant reminder of the world beyond the gallery walls. He explores the charged imagery of disaster—airplane crashes, the aftermath of explosions—and raises coolly theoretical questions in order to analyze how these images can be read. Black Ghost Blues Redux considers identity politics: Gaines’s collaborator, Hoyun Son, subverts racial stereotypes by belting out a blues classic by Lightnin’ Hopkins. For the first three minutes, she smokes and sways to a recording of the singer’s husky, male voice, and then passionately renders the song in her own, atonal style. The Korean woman’s performance asks viewers to reconsider their cultural assumptions, as well as to focus on the resonance of the song. Gaines’s career itself has defied societal expectations. A leading West Coast–based artist, teacher, writer, and intellectual, he has finally come to international prominence after four decades of work. The first black artist to matriculate in the graduate program at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Gaines has never made art that enters into conventional dialogues about race matters. Instead, he has adapted art-world codes to a rigorous study of language and its constructed meaning.