Dike Blair: Floors/Doors/Windows/Walls. A Contemporary Art Exhibition at the Secession

This exhibition features around 50 recent paintings by Dike Blair, primarily focusing on architectural elements, alongside three new sculptures. The works explore the relationship between illusionistic representation and concrete abstraction, with paintings depicting everyday subjects and sculptures reinterpreting architectural forms into abstract compositions.

In the Secession, Dike Blair showcases approximately 50 paintings, mostly created between 2010 and 2015, that largely depict the subjects mentioned in the exhibition's title: floors, doors, windows, and walls. Complementing these are three sculptures specifically designed for the exhibition by the US artist, which engage with these four titular elements and respond to the four-room layout of the exhibition space. The smaller, fourth room is dedicated to small-format pictures of cocktails and ashtrays, subjects from the artist's book. Blair uses these sculptures to structure the viewing of his paintings as a parcours, attracted by the paradoxical relationship between illusionistic representation and concrete abstraction. While his paintings remain representational, his sculptures transform concrete objects like walls, windows, doors, and flooring into abstract compositions. The exhibition groups paintings by motif, while the sculptures unite all four elements into a cohesive whole. Blair draws inspiration for his subjects from the everyday and often unremarkable. His repertoire extends beyond architectural elements to include still lifes, particularly of cocktails and bar-evoking arrangements, as well as landscapes, flowers, and female eyes. He has dedicated over 30 years to gouache painting, a technique related to watercolor, consistently executed on paper. His practice has evolved from plein air work to memory-based painting, and now to a studio practice using his own photographs as templates. These photographs are sometimes edited to select the most compelling section, as a good photo does not necessarily yield an interesting painting. The predominantly small format of the works was initially dictated by the size of watercolor paper. Blair's painting style is nearly photorealistic, executed with subtlety and precision, demonstrating his interest in light, reflections, and translucent materials like glass and water. The works highlight fine transitions and nuances, exploring themes of light and shadow, and subtle color variations, which are central to both his paintings and sculptures. The wall elements created for the Secession, serving as bases for the sculptures, feature delicate veils of color with transitions visible upon close inspection. For years, Blair has paired his paintings with sculptures to emphasize formal aspects and contrasting principles of order, reflecting his dualistic approach that explores fullness and emptiness, nature and architecture, interior and exterior, and center and periphery. This dualism helps him confront a dilemma in artistic production, where each formal decision could lead to a different outcome, prompting him to often present pairs of paintings and sculptures representing two versions.

Information and tickets for the exhibition are available via a link to an external ticketing platform. Visitors should consult the provided link for details on admission and booking. The general opening hours for the Secession are Tuesday to Sunday, 10 AM to 6 PM, and the venue is open today.