OPUS Project Space presents Sea Level, a solo exhibition of paintings by Frank Lind September 11 - October 4, 2014.  An opening reception will be held on Thursday, September 11, 6-8pm at OPUS Project Space. Open to the Public, Fridays and Saturdays 12-6 pm and by appointment during September.

 

Around 2007, Frank Lind began making small paintings of the abandoned World War II army barracks in Fort Tilden, on the Rockaway Peninsula. These structures are affecting reminders of a time of worldwide strife and violence. Now decommissioned, Fort Tilden is part of Gateway National Park. In 2010, he revisited the paintings, this time considering the consequences of global climate change. Lind began with a very real premise—the Greenland ice sheet accelerating in its melting and the whole mass sliding off the island into the ocean, raising sea levels worldwide fifteen to twenty feet, which is consistent with current scientific estimates. He found the idea of the ocean washing into these already haunting structures most compelling. Subsequently, in 2012, Superstorm Sandy struck with a sixteen foot wall of water. The water has receded, for now, but the area has been completely transformed, covered with sand from what was once a line of huge protective dunes, now flattened. Lind is revisiting the barracks once again, this time looking at a landscape covered by a blizzard made of gray sand. Many of the paintings now come in sets of three: before, during and after.

 

Part of Lind’s inspiration for the intersection of art and science comes from the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. He feels that the backgrounds taken alone are among the finest landscape paintings in New York City, and that the best are done by James Perry Wilson. In reading about Wilson’s work and technique, Lind was intrigued by his use of a very restricted set of tube oil colors and decided to adopt this strategy himself. He now uses only ten tube colors plus white—three reds, three blues, three yellows