On Friday, June 21, 2024, the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center, Nyack, NY, is pleased to open an exhibition of work by Dike Blair. Prompted by Hopper’s fascination with the cinematic, MATINEE: DIKE BLAIR explores Blair’s use of the filmic concept of mise-en-scène in his paintings, which, for the past forty years, he has based on his own intimate point-and-shoot photographs. As in cinema–particularly the moody vignettes of film noir–light is a character in its own right in the work of both artists, whether casting an eerie pallor on a vacant interior or illuminating the lip of a half-drunk glass.

Like Hopper, who drew inspiration from his frequent trips to the movie theater, Blair’s works imply narratives without offering definitive plots. Blair’s works are installed at Edward Hopper House Museum so they unfold sequentially, inviting the viewer to stitch together a story from images and absences. MATINEE: DIKE BLAIR foregrounds the “realism” of Blair and Hopper within the context of the utter irreality of the movies, leaving the viewer to marvel in the liminal state between fact and fiction, narrative and pictures.