In Dike Blair's current exhibition at Mary Goldman Gallery in Chinatown, he presents new, photo-realistic gouache paintings that depict the eyes of his wife, friends and former students.  Each of the eyes is isolated in the center of a much larger piece of white paper.  Sometimes there are two eyes per page, sometimes the eyes seem to be a pair and sometimes they don't although the groupings are, it seems, determined by eye color.  Blair says that he is interested in the symbolic value of the eye, and given this lead, there are limitless possibilities. 

On the opposite wall of the gallery there are gouache and pencil paintings on paper that are taken from snapshot photographs of the intersecting yellow lines that delineate parking spaces.  The quality of these paintings, with the halo of light bouncing of the silica in the asphalt, is so eerie and precise that it is easy to mistake the painting for the photograph.  It makes sense why Richard Prince, in an interview between the two in ArtReview entitled, ‘Window on their World' suggests that Blair's ability to make photo-realistic watercolors is probably one of those ‘God given things.'  Prince goes on to say that even though those ‘God-given things are sometimes the hardest to acknowledge and give into they do yield beautiful results when it finally comes together.'

In between the walls of paintings Blair has new sculptures that take the packing crate as their point of departure.  The flat, monolithic surface of the crate allows Blair to experiment with loose, painterly sprays of color, carpeting and tangles of thick-gauged electrical cables.  The cables unite the sculptures to each other and to the room in way that is suggestive of a network even though, like his previous sculptures, they have the feeling of a domestically casual, modern home office.  This feeling has an increased sense of sophistication to it which is due partially to the tasteful restraint in the juxtaposition of the paintings and the sculptures but also to the inclusion of several of Isamu Noguchi's Akari floor lamps.  

The lamps themselves combine 1950's modern design with traditional Japanese paper lanterns and can be purchased at the Noguchi Museum Store for just under $300.00 depending on which style you choose.  The inclusion of the lamps, fortifies Blair's long-term interest in the technique of ikebana, the Japanese method of object arrangement in which each element is carefully placed to achieve a perfect balance of the whole.  Of this effect the perfection seems to be in its subtlety and containment so that when you are in the space, surrounded by the work, there is a certain mood and feeling which can be on the one hand, like being at the beach and on the other, like being at the airport.  In either case when you leave the space you will leave with a little bit of it.

- Nancy Lupo 

(Images top-bottom:  Dike Blair, Untitled, 2008, gouache and pencil on paper, 15x20 in; Dike Blair, Untitled (Caverly), 2007, gouache and pencil on paper, 10x14 in.  Courtesy of the Artist and Mary Goldman Gallery, LA.