The phrase "an empty frame" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a physical frame that lacks a picture or content, or metaphorically to indicate a lack of substance or meaning in a situation.
Example: "The wall was adorned with an empty frame, waiting for the perfect piece of art to fill it."
Alternatives: "a vacant frame" or "a hollow frame".
There, he saw an empty frame where de Kooning's "Woman-Ochre" had hung.
Here and there, an empty frame showed triangles of glass still clinging to the wood.
Without a tie, a jacket and shirt is an empty frame.
It's something I'd never done — how long do I stay on an empty frame?
One of the old gasholders is left as an empty frame, for example, a powerful structure that needs no embellishment.
I was startled to see that in these attempts the center easel holds only an empty frame.
Throughout its short life and especially in its second season, "The Americans'" directors did a fine job of visually depicting the characters' isolation and alienation -- individuals were frequently shown alone at the center of an empty space, or two characters were often depicted at the opposite sides of a nearly empty frame.
Michaela Meise, a young artist from Berlin, comments on the selective nature of vision with an elegant black-and-white sculpture: a free-standing empty frame held at eye level by three coltish legs.
On first impression, to say the sight is underwhelming is an understatement: there are about a dozen empty frames spaced around a darkened room.
For caging bees in individual enclosures inside the hive, we constructed a horizontal wooden separation in the centre of an empty honeycomb frame (without a comb) that divided the frame into two similar compartments (10 × 3 × 43.4 cm).
When you're capturing video, you can grip the empty frame as a handle; the whole affair looks like you're holding a traditional camcorder, since the camera body flips 90 degrees away in either direction (lefties, rejoice!).
