Charlie James Gallery was formed and opened in 2008 in Chinatown, Los Angeles, and is owned and directed by Charlie James, a collector turned gallerist who had a background in CRM application consulting at Microsoft and other companies before opening the business. The gallery’s ethos asserts that art should engage with the time of its making, and is known for platforming work of significant political and cultural engagement. In the gallery’s early years subversive text-based work and institutional critique were emphasized, largely in response to the trend of “Zombie Formalism” that was ubiquitous in the contemporary art world at the time.