Dike Blair

The artist Dike Blair depicts ordinary, mass-produced objects in striking compositions inspired by the Japanese tradition of ikebana, a method of arranging flowers and other objects in a way that achieves an overall sense of harmony. Blair applies this approach across various mediums, including painting, photography, and sculptural installations. His small gouaches, for instance, are painted from photographed arrangements of items that often refer to petty vices (a pack of cigarettes) or cultural consumption (VHS or cassette tapes). Blair's installations, on the other hand, highlight the singularity and importance of individual objects–such as a paper lamp set in opposition to a freestanding light box, in a sort of standoff between two sources of illumination–in a way that can recall the Modernist sculpture of Isamu Noguchi.

Like ikebana, the harmony Blair achieves in his artworks does not rely so much on symmetry, but rather on discord and imbalance that is reconciled through adroit spacing and the implicit relationships between the objects at hand, with the items arranged to complement each other on both an aesthetic and intellectual level. The recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, Blair has had his work exhibited at such institutions as the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina (2008), and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (2002). He was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial.