There may very well have been three bodies of work in this show, or, at the very least, the need for three discrete exhibition spaces in which to view what was here. The hanging glass works would comprise the first; the digital animation a second; and the stacked, framed works the third. While I get that there was meant to be a dialogue between them, it was difficult to view any one piece without taking in extraneous information, particularly with the third group which was crammed in between storage racks behind the front desk. And I didn't get the sense that I was supposed to consider the work in relationship to such external factors. If so, I wasn't buying it.
That concern aside, to parse out the perception of color, for example, as a function of layers, sequence, dialogue, and peripatetic viewing does seem worth thinking about, in general. Certainly, factors of time-based media all. In specifics, I would have preferred a more heightened sense of this phenomena in actual space, for example, especially with the dimensional works. I didn't seem to find one area where they filtered in such a way as to provide a complex view or a thought about the break down of an image, certainly an idea that plays out in the animation, the written intent of the show, and in other works I have seen of Manley's previously. On the latter of place, I couldn't help but think frequently of Brian O'Connell's work (fellow Redling mate) what with the specific use of space and colored glass effects. Granted, O'Connell seems more tuned into architectural space and its effects more so than Manley who seems primarily preoccupied with sequencing and layers within a more hermetic space despite the volumes it occupies in both time and space.
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