
A chronologically hung survey spanning 31 years of painting by Dike Blair reveals the way an artist can mostly ignore the human figure but still mine human experience. Blair, who is also known for his sculpture, is represented by 57 untitled small-scale gouaches, from 1984 to 2015. These photorealist works on paper share Vija Celmins’s quietude and Robert Bechtle’s exactitude. The show commences in the outer gallery with brushy Sunday-painter-style landscapes in folksy handmade frames, dating from the 1980s. By the following decade, the brushstrokes disappear and a raking light is introduced. The mood gets darker, a bit Hopperesque. A trackball-style computer mouse, the subject of a 1992 work made with gouache and spray paint, is bathed in the cool light of a computer screen. Some recent works would appear to take their subjects from Blair’s studio. A pair of brown leather boots, caked in paint, rests on a spattered floor. A nearby painting elevates the mundane: a pink-hued glass shower door is stippled with water droplets. The glass is fogged and opaque but the eye lingers, trying to catch a glimpse of the other side.