Blart

Sol Lewitt was the master of grids. Each of his built or painted
grids is evidence of a larger system that generated it, a governing
equation. In Dike Blair’s smallish painting of an empty parking lot,
the larger system is the unwritten one that dictates which parts of the
world ought to be photographed, and which ought to be painted. Some
things are ruined when you photograph them, and others can’t survive in
paintings, but which are which? “Untitled” is easily mistaken for a
photograph, specifically a film still taken from a noir picture. (The
show it’s in is called Neonoir.) Like Vija Celmins’s detailed
drawings of night skies, Blair’s parking lot lives uncertainly and
slightly fantastically. It is a lovingly detailed blank surface, a grid
that waits for a system.