
Yet Untitled
2013
Yet Untitled from 2013 occupies a genuinely singular position within Dashiell Manley's practice, functioning simultaneously as painting, object, and architectural proposition. Constructed from gouache, watercolor, ink, and canvas suspended within an acrylic sheet and presented in the artist's own handmade frame with an accompanying shelf, the work refuses the conventions of flat pictorial space at every level. The double-sided format is not merely a formal conceit but a structural argument: meaning accumulates across both faces, requiring the viewer to move around the object and consider what remains hidden at any given moment. The result is a work that withholds full resolution while sustaining a quality of concentrated, almost charged attention. Manley emerged from the Southern California painting scene and has built a reputation for excavating the layered histories of abstraction through mark, surface, and unconventional support. Measuring 124.5 by 93.3 centimetres, Yet Untitled carries the modest physical presence typical of his work from this period, though it carries an outsized conceptual weight. The artist's decision to frame the piece himself and integrate a shelf speaks to his broader interest in the painting as a living, situated thing rather than a passive surface. The title, deliberately provisional, extends this logic, positioning the work as perpetually in a state of becoming rather than fixed conclusion. For collectors, this is a rare opportunity to acquire an early work that anticipates the formal and philosophical concerns Manley has continued to develop across his career. Signed and offered in strong condition, Yet Untitled represents both an intellectually rigorous and visually compelling addition to any serious collection of contemporary painting. The artist's frames and structural interventions from this period are particularly sought after, as they capture a moment when his thinking about objecthood and the limits of the painted surface was crystallizing into its most adventurous and durable form.
- Medium
- Double-sided: gouache, watercolor, ink, canvas and acrylic sheet, in artist's frame, with shelf
- Overall
- Signed
- Yes
- Spotted At
- Gallery · Phillips
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