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    Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

    “Overlook” (2025). gouache, acrylic, ink, and 42 vintage postcards
    on panel, 32 x 40 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, shared with permission

    Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

    March 19, 2025

    ArtClimate

    Kate Mothes

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    The first known postcard printed as a souvenir can be traced to Vienna in 1871, followed by commemorative cards for famous events like the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 and the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. It wasn’t long before a fashion for picture postcards took the U.S. by storm throughout the first half of the 20th century.

    For David Opdyke, the iconic correspondences form the groundwork for an artistic practice examining capitalism, globalization, consumerism, and our fraught and increasingly disconnected relationship with the environment. Occasionally darkly humorous yet steeped in a sense of foreboding, his uncanny scenes suggest what kind of world we might live in we do nothing to stem the mounting climate crisis.

    “Charismatic Megafauna” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    Opdyke summons idyllic coastlines, national parks, government monuments, wildlife, and civic infrastructure to weave “fractured yet cohesive topographies,” says Cristin Tierney Gallery, which is presenting the artist’s current solo exhibition, Waiting for the Future.

    For nearly a decade, Opdyke has invoked the nostalgia of landscape postcards to interrogate the climate emergency within the context of American politics and geographies. “Through these carefully altered compositions, Opdyke merges the past and the future, presenting both urgent and inevitable visions of environmental upheaval,” the gallery says.

    The artist often uses antique cards that he purchases on eBay, painting scenes of environmental disasters or discordances between nature and architecture. Alternating between cartoons and life-like portrayals of trees, animals, fires, and structures, his compositions range from single cards to wall-spanning assemblages, his gouache-painted details spreading from frame to frame.

    In “Overlook,” for example, giant tentacles destroy bridges, rising sea water threatens cities, and huge fires rage in institutional buildings. A dome encloses a metropolis, a rocket named Mars 2 heads for a new home in the solar system, and an airplane banner advertises “Technology Will Save Us” in a bleak yet not unimaginable reality fueled by techno-utopianism.

    “Enough of Nature” (2025), gouache, acrylic, and ink on 500 vintage postcards, 104 x 168 inches

    In his large-scale “Enough of Nature,” Opdyke transforms natural landscapes into encampment sites for those displaced from their homes, and portions of the overall composition appear to dislodge from the main grid as if floating away.

    Caught tenuously between outmoded industrial practices, shifting societal value systems, and a rapidly evolving climate crisis, Opdyke’s pieces point to once-idealized symbols of American progress to stress the dangers of ignoring our own impact on the environment.

    Waiting for the Future underscores the precariousness of complacency, a “cautionary tale,” the gallery says, laying bare the fragility of our constructed environment.

    The show continues through April 26 in New York City. Find more on the artist’s website.

    Detail of “Overlook”

    “Main Stage” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    “Unity, Industry, Victory” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    “Insurrection” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    “Fourth Wall” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    “If you can’t say something nice” (2024), gouache and ink on two vintage postcards, 4 x 12 1/2 inches

    “Breaking In” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    Detail of “Enough of Nature”

    “First Contact” (2023), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

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    Cleverly Collaged Portraits Layer Vintage Ads and Magazine Spreads into Dramatic Daydreams

    
    Art

    #collage
    #found photographs
    #humor
    #paper
    #vintage

    November 18, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Did You Ever Really Love Me.” All images © Shane Wheatcroft, shared with permission
    With a flair for spectacle and clandestine activities, the perfectly coiffed characters of Shane Wheatcroft’s collages face a deluge of intrigue and drama. The Kent-based artist snips vintage ads and editorial spreads that become the musings of professionally photographed subjects: a woman replays an excruciating party scene, a businessman envisions a wholesome family gathering, and quite a few protagonists imagine scenarios they likely keep covert.
    Having worked with the medium for the last five years, Wheatcroft boasts a body of work that includes a broad array of collages, from bold typographic sayings to cheeky compositions that use ad slogans and outmoded headlines to poke fun at social conventions. Surreal and witty, the new portraits feature imagery from periodicals published between 1945 and 1975. They’re spurred by “being a big fan of John Stezaker and buying old movie annuals that had stunning publicity shots of film stars on plain backgrounds. The recent series I’m making is really my attempt to reflect everyday dramas and scenarios through the medium of collage,” he says.  “They’re kind of like a hybrid of Dalí’s portrait of Mae West and Coronation Street.”
    The main portrait sets the tone for the piece, Wheatcroft tells Colossal, with the background image, furniture, and figures pasted on top. These additional elements compose an abstract representation of a face and generally feature a single eye peering through a television set or frame on the wall. “I’ll often have a song or personal experience in my head that’ll become the theme of the piece,” the artist says. “I can spend hours searching for an image of the right-sized chair or person that will fit. It’s a bit like making a jigsaw puzzle and hunting for the missing pieces.”
    Represented by Lilford Gallery in Canterbury, Wheatcroft has been sharing a variety of flat collages and 3D diorama-style pieces—see these layered works up close on Instagram—and he also has a few pieces available for purchase on Artfinder. (via Kottke)

    “Tough Room”
    Left: “Parents Outgrown.” Right: “The Merry Widow”
    “You Are My Sunshine”
    “RGB”
    Left: “Private Eye.” Right: “Notice Me”
    “The Gables”

    #collage
    #found photographs
    #humor
    #paper
    #vintage

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