Jacob Dahlgren's work of art I, the World, Things, Life—a grid of yellow-and-black dartboards 39 feet long and 8 feet high, hung on a gallery wall—is owned by Dale and Leslie Chihuly. When I saw a version of it at the last Venice Biennale, I walked right by, irritated by its invitation to commence structured fun. If I'm remembering right, the pavilion it was in had a glass wall, and the adult-playground-festival atmosphere outside bled right in. Who needed more fun at the world's most fun art event? I did not throw any darts.
Deep in the Henry Art Gallery last week, where the same work is installed in a high, windowless gallery with a slightly reflective wood floor that makes the grid of dartboards melt away at the bottom, I was converted. The darts are a light way into hard-edge abstraction—Swedish artist Dahlgren's favorite subject. Lightness is his preferred style. In a video showing near the entrance to the museum, artists paint abstract signs in a large studio and then carry them outside and through the streets of a Scandinavian city. The artists are marching as if in protest—even escorted by a police detail—but the colorful placards stand for nothing but themselves; they promote only direct awareness of color and shape, leaving their bright impressions on your eyes.
Two other videos (one hidden in the museum's silver-skinned elevator) are slide shows of found abstractions—shirts, store displays, traffic signs, machinery, a rainbow—as a reminder that hard-edge abstraction is ubiquitous, familiar, and even friendly. It is not necessarily alienating or (as in modernism) code for the overly serious.
Back to the dartboard: What first becomes apparent is that one will have to determine one's own rules. (The only non-obvious rule about how this works is that darts are left on the board until both boxes—one with red darts, one with green—are empty, at which point the board is cleared.) What next becomes apparent is that throwing darts at dozens of boards is addictive. The gallery guards have gotten good. They can throw dozens of darts at once so that every one hits the boards at pretty much exactly the same time. It's like a hail of gunfire, a perfect attack; it's a little thrill. Other people admire their skills.
Hard-edge abstraction in an art gallery is typically a solitary experience. It's you, the painting, and the question of whether you "get" it. But here, people come together in abstraction. They line up at the black line and shoot darts. They talk. Their arms get sore. They throw reds into the green area. They knock each other's darts down. They stay awhile. And when they close their eyes, they see circles and stripes. 
