UNTITLED is culminated to announce It's Been Too Long, a solo exhibition by Phil Wagner.

Phil Wagner's new works in It's Been Too Long formally depart from his previous bodies of assemblage sculptures and return to his original engagement of painting. Wagner creates two modes of paintings: phone book and musical score paintings. Wagner draws directly from his subject matter, but enlarges the work to a much grander scale. It is not Wagner's concern to perfectly copy each image from it's source, and the execution of the works vary in degree of technical accuracy. However, they maintain their humanness, evident in every mark. Though each piece varies in content, their compositions and muted color palette of black and beige remain constant, reflecting the black ink on faded paper of their sources.

In the dominant part of the series, Wagner paints telephone numbers from the New York and the Los Angeles areas. Wagner chose his phone numbers at random by thumbing through the white pages, an increasingly obsolete mode for contact. In the conjoining part of the series, Wagner depicts musical scores on a large scale. He commands the formal composition of the musical sheets, muting the audio these works otherwise emit. The selected numbers and notes move beyond transcription and now exist in a visual life beyond their utility. The differing segments of the new series act to aestheticize the language of numbers and notes and comment on the fading of printed matter, bringing back humanity to an otherwise discarded analogue past.

Phil Wagner, born in 1974 in East Moline, IL, received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and lives and works in Los Angeles. This is his third solo exhibition with UNTITLED. Wagner's other notable solo exhibitions include End of March, Mihai Nicodim, Los Angeles, CA (2013), The Arts Club, London, UK (2013), and Voila, Parker Jones Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2011). He has shown in a number of group shows such as Farewell Rodney, Sommer Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel (2013), Into the Surface, Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy (2012), and American Exuberance, Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation, Miami, FL (2011), and many others.