In the mid ’60s, when he was in his 30s, Sam Tchakalian hit upon the economically inflected abstract idiom that has served him ever since. It’s true that the basic look of his latest paintings is practically indistinguishable from the look of those of ten, or even twenty years ago, but a stabilized design—in Tchakalian’s case, of reduplicative troweled-on, canvas-wide bands of solid and/or blended color—needn’t imply any dearth in the ideas-and-passion department. Tchakalian has his design motif down pat the better to intuit and locate his passion; at least, that, rather than a sameness, is what