Greg Lindquist’s Williamsburg studio used to be a furniture factory and, he thinks, “will undoubtedly someday be made into luxury lofts.”
The paintings in “To Brooklyn,” his current exhibition, attempt to aesthetically document the ebb and flow of development on Williamsburg’s waterfront. Or, as Lindquist puts it, “capture a mood that may be interpreted as a solemn protest against urban renewal” with his bold paintings, starkly depicting the dilapidated buildings that line Kent Avenue and the shiny high rises that are sprouting up between them.
Lindquist, who calls Brooklyn his “first love of a city,” credits Walt Whitman as a major inspiration for his work. Many of the paintings’ titles — including that of the show itself — reference poems Whitman wrote about Brooklyn.
Lindquist first began his exploration of landscape as memorial during his undergraduate days at North Carolina State University, when he did a series of paintings depicting concentration camps, as well as devastated post-war Germany.
“I was interested in what temporal context these spaces rest in contemporary culture and consciousness,” he said.
Waxing quixotic about his adopted home, Lindquist claimed that he could be content painting Brooklyn over and over again, saying, “I’ll grow as Brooklyn transforms around me.”
“To Brooklyn” is at McCaig-Welles (129 Roebling St. at Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg) through March 31. For information, call (718) 384-8729.
