Incomplete Text: Set 15, “N” Blue Letters, 1979
- Medium
- Mixed media on paper
- Dimensions
- Overall: 26 1/2 x 57 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (67.31 x 146.05 x 3.81 cm)
- Accession Number
- 2011.202
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Purchase with funds provided by the Drawings Committee and a gift of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
In his Incomplete Text series, Gaines transcribed pages from a 1977 book by Roy Nickerson titled Brother Whale: A Pacific Whalewatcher’s Log, in which the author offered an analysis of the brains of various whale species and their capacity for communication through different sounds.
Gaines then systematically removed letters from the typed and hand written pages, rearranging them to produce fragments that recall the whistles and clicks of whale-to-whale communication. A key figure in conceptual art, Gaines adopts formulaic processes in his work, often utilizing systems not to represent objective truths but to expose the subjective nature of structures like cognition and language. In the case of these triptychs, the methodical manipulation of Nickerson’s theory of species-specific language can be read as an allegory for the tools of human communication, including its fluidity and failures.