The Los Angeles-based artist Dashiell Manley’s new exhibition, “Periplums,” at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Manhattan, is a reimagining of a show that was originally meant to debut last March, when the Eaton fire broke out and ruined his canvases as the paint was drying. The works were based on government-commissioned photos of Japanese internment camps taken by Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams in the 1940s — camps to which several of his relatives were sent along with over 120,000 Japanese Americans. After the fires, Manley says, he became more interested in mapping his own experience onto the project, resulting in a more personal continuation of his heavily textured “Elegy” paintings: The 10 canvases ultimately featured in the exhibition are bisected along lines reflecting the journey from his Altadena house to Manzanar, one of the 10 camps. The show also includes the artist’s re-edit of a 1939 Warner Bros. animation, in which Uncle Sam teaches Porky Pig about American history. Manley has pulled every frame from the nine-minute original and re-sequenced it into an original work. As the father to two children under seven, he’s particularly interested in the way cartoons can convey information.
Periplums” is on view Mar. 5 through Apr. 18, marianneboeskygallery.com.
