Works Exhibited
About
The relationship between my paintings and sculpture (or other installation-type work) has intrigued me for a couple decades. The paintings are fairly traditional and almost always personal while the sculptures are more formal, or engage less traditional forms. One thing that seems to have remained constant in all my work is the subject of light, and how to form paint to apprehend light.
—Dike Blair
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present new gouaches and sculpture by Dike Blair.
In this first exhibition since his recent 10-year survey at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Blair continues to explore the relationship between painting and sculpture, between the solid, utilitarian reality of three-dimensional forms and the field of illusory visual effects.
Blair's recent hybrid sculptures are comprised of painted, wooden shipping crates that contain framed, gouache paintings, which unpack to become part of a larger assemblage. The crates may also contain objects, like painted carpets or Noguchi lamps. The sculptures may evoke thoughts about light, both actual and implied, the liminal, and more quotidian notions about storage, furniture and the human body. In his more recent sculpture, he has dispensed with artificial lights in favor of a heightened painterly luminism. His photo-based gouaches capture glimpses of a roving eye that seeks out and captures a split second, dead-pan phenomenon of the observed world. They bring attention to the banal and transitory details of everyday life, from cigarettes in ashtrays to footprints in snow. They feel at once very personal, even diaristic, but also filtered and mediated.
