Charles Gaines is an American artist whose work interrogates the discourse relating aesthetics and politics. Taking the form of drawings, photographic series and video installations, the work consistently invokes the use of systems as generative part of the artist's practice. His work is rooted in Conceptual Art and he is committed to its tenets of engaging cognition and language. There is a strong musical thread running though much of Gaines' work from evident in his repeated use of musical scores as well his engagement with the idea of indeterminacy as per John Cage.