For Contemporary Art Lovers: New Exhibit At Cantor Arts Center

PALO ALTO, CA – An exhibition series that reveals continuities between contemporary and historical art, New to the Cantor: Dashiell Manley is the Cantor Arts Center’s first spotlight presentation focused on an emerging artist. The exhibition, currently on view, runs through April 24, 2017.

“With this new series focusing on the work of emerging artists, we are able to deepen our investigation into the place of contemporary art in an historic teaching museum,” said Alison Gass, Chief Curator and Associate Director for Exhibitions and Collections. “These artists live and work in the same moment we do and can provide insights into the state of the world around us in unique ways that can resonate with our many audiences.”

Although Manley’s practice takes a particularly contemporary slant, the artist draws on the tradition of using the newspaper as a source of inspiration.

New to the Cantor: Dashiell Manley features selected paintings from three bodies of work. Using the newspaper as a starting point with the series The New York Times Paintings, the artist uses watercolor pencil to meticulously transcribe the front pages of The New York Times across eight-foot canvases, deftly translating recent events into large-scale, visually stunning art objects that slip enticingly between text and abstract painting.

Manley’s second series in this exhibition, Various sources, moves away from language and turns toward the pictorial mode of comics. Based on appropriated political cartoons from The New Yorker and Charlie Hebdo, these works hold even more potency following the attacks on the latter, Paris-based magazine in January 2015.

The final sequence of work on display, Elegy for whatever, is a stark departure from the previous two series. Using oil paints and a palette knife, Manley builds up the paintings’ surfaces using small, quick strokes, rendering abstract paintings that operate in an emotional vein. Although these works seem completely devoid of subject matter, certain titles suggest that the artist has never completely removed himself from the language of art history.

“Collectively, the works assembled here complete a conversation,” said Curatorial Assistant Jennifer Carty. “From text to image to the eradication of subject, these paintings speak to the changing nature of political consumption in the digital age, while also engaging with formal questions that have occupied artists for generations.”

About the Artist
Dashiell Manley (b. 1983, Fontana, California) holds a B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. His work has been presented in the exhibitions Made in L.A. 2012, organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and, most recently, Performing the Grid at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles. Manley lives and works in Los Angeles.

Cantor Arts Center

The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University is a vital and dynamic institution with a venerable history. Founded in 1891 with the university, the historic museum was expanded and renamed in 1999 for lead donors Iris and B. Gerald Cantor. The Cantor Arts Center is open six days a week: Wednesday–Monday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., Thursday until 8 p.m.; closed Tuesday. Admission is free. The Cantor is located on the Stanford campus, off Palm Drive at Museum Way. Parking is free after 4 p.m. weekdays and all day on weekends and major holidays. Information: 650-723-4177, museum.stanford.edu.

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--Image and information courtesy of Cantor Arts Center