Dike Blair

Jeffrey Stark is pleased to present Sweet Tides, an exhibition of new work by Dike Blair comprised of two digital prints hung alongside a group of sculptural elements.

Dike Blair has hung two vertically oriented digital prints in the gallery, which feature high-resolution scans of two gouaches made between 2016 and 2017. Viewed from two different angles and rendered with nearly photorealistic precision, both works depict an inground swimming pool viewed during the evening, in which a pool light reveals a garden hose snaking underwater. The digital prints approximate human scale, and their bottom edges approach the gallery floor, which Blair has covered with black wall-to-wall carpeting. Proceeding from the gallery entry, the black carpet is cut to door-width and rolled away to reveal a green foam carpet pad underneath. The rolled carpet is held place by a door-sized pane of glass that leans against the back wall. Predominantly black and green, the various elements of Blair’s installation are reflected in the gallery’s picture window, generating a set of phenomena that exploits the surfaces of his reflective, transparent, and opaque materials.

Blair’s installation pairs the concrete abstraction of his material arrangements with the illusionistic representation of his digital prints. Both aspects of the presentation attest to Blair’s abiding concern for the properties of light, as well as a long-standing interest in translucent materials like water and glass. The complex interplay between the elements of his installation blurs the distinction between image and object, in order to raise a set of questions about surfaces, reflections, and the organization of space. Rather than offer an argument, Sweet Tides assembles its parts to establish an atmosphere bathed in reflection, where the process of formal decision-making is patently on view.

Dike Blair (b. 1952, New Castle, PA) lives and works in New York City. He studied at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977. Blair’s work has been the subject of numerous solo presentations both stateside and abroad, including exhibitions at Karma, New York; Feature Inc., New York; Gagosian Gallery, New York; Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina; Daniel Weinberg Gallery, New York; The Secession, Vienna; and International With Monument, New York. His work is frequently featured in group exhibitions, including presentations at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin. In 2009, Blair received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and in 2010, he was awarded the Rome Prize by The American Academy in Rome. Blair is represented by Karma, New York.