When we look at art, we usually expect to see some sort of reflection of how the artist felt at the time he or she did the painting, woodcarving, sculpture, or whatever else before which we stand.  We expect to get a glimpse of the artist's vision.
     Any student of art history will tell us that much of art lies in the interpretation, the artist's as well as the one who is looking at the artist's work.  Ironically, however, it is in interpretation where things become difficult.  Nowhere is this most true with postmodern art.  If texts (a generic term for all creative work) elude all permanent interpretation, we walk through a land whose boundaries never appear.  The journey is endless, the possibilities unlimited, the expanse wide open.
     On the other hand, as the work of postmodern artist Charles Gaines (currently on exhibit in New York) demonstrates, when we let go of boundaries and contexts, we may often see what things most mean.  If we shed all notions of what things ought to represent or be, if we divest ourselves of all foundation and starting points (though this in itself is a foundation and starting point!), we step into an entirely mercurial and malleable world.  It is a world we make, remake, and remake once more, over and over again.  It's our world, our very own world.
     Fair enough.  Yet we still have not managed to decide what this world really means.  And even if we insist that this is not important, we do so not knowing whether we are right.  Unmade we remain.  Art demonstrates to us that although freedom is crucial to humanness, equally crucial is recognition of the fact of foundation.  Again, even if life is nothing more than a set of random events, how would we know it?