greg lindquist

you are nature

february 9 – march 10, 2010

reception: thursday, february 9, 6-8 pm

The Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to present “You are Nature,” an exhibition of recent paintings on canvas and directly on the wall by Greg Lindquist. The gallery is located at 529 W 20th St, 6th floor and is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am - 6 pm. The exhibition will be on view from February 9 through March 10, 2012. An opening reception for the artist will be held on February 9 from 6 until 8 pm. A limited edition artist booklet with essays by the artist and conversations with the artists Ali Banisadr, Mary Mattingly and Norm Paris will be available at the gallery and on-line at youarenature.wordpress.com.

“You are Nature” examines the perceived distinctions of nature and culture that Lindquist dissolves in painting. While we might look stereotypically at the forms of nature as amorphic and with “organic” curves rather than geometric or rhomboid (as Robert Smithson discusses Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy), Lindquist establishes that there is no difference. Lindquist’s title also recalls Jackson Pollock’s famous statement in response to Hans Hoffman, when Hoffman challenged Pollock’s drip paintings, telling him that he needed to be working from life or from nature, Pollock retorted, “I am nature.” Lindquist also has been inspired by Peter Halley’s 1983 essay “Nature and Culture” in which he describes cultural events such as World War II as natural disaster like a flood or fire, calling attention to phenomenon as a web of signs that constitute the modern world.

Some of Lindquist’s paintings depict enigmatic objects in the landscape, while others frame the landscape through technology such as digital screens that mediate how we experience our world. His work broadly views the landscape impressionistically through the artificial environment of mechanical reproduction. In his work, the splatter is the dot is the screen. The mystery of craft in painting is explored, developing richly layered surfaces through drips, splatters and removal, suggesting various screens, veils or scrims of light through which images are viewed as well as technological mediation. The paintings on the wall depict segments of cast light shaped by windows that are detached from their original source and call attention to the architecture as a canvas and screen for painting.

While Lindquist’s previous exhibition focused on a conceptually ambiguous site specificity in architectural cement boxes and cast slabs, “You are Nature” focuses on painting the enigmatic in the landscape, in both land and water, above and below the surface. In Lindquist’s recent scuba diving trip with his brother, he has explored the world under the surface of water as inspiration for painting and models for thinking about nature. He observes, “If the 1960s were about space as a site for exploration and repository for imaginations, our final frontier is our environment. The ocean, with miles of uncharted territory and countless unexamined species and organisms, is our intergalactic fascination.” Water becomes a unifying metaphor for Lindquist’s work in terms of the surface and depth of painting.  

Greg Lindquist received a dual masters degree in fine arts in painting and art history from Pratt Institute in 2007. Recently, he has participated in the group shows “Planet of Slums,” co-curated by La Toya Ruby Frazier and Omar Lopez-Chahoud and “No One is an Island” at LMCC’s exhibition space on Governor’s Island curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud. He is the 2009-10 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grantee and the Sally & Milton Avery Arts Foundation Grantee for the 2009 Art Omi International Artist Residency. His work has been written about in various publications, including Art in America, ARTNews, Frieze, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Sun, The New York Observer, The New York Press and Sculpture. Lindquist is currently working on several collaborative projects with Mary Mattingly, including Landship and Food, again and Flock Houses, which will be at the Clocktower Gallery in May 2012. He also is the Art Books in Review Editor at The Brooklyn Rail, contributing editor to artcritical.com and contributing writer at ARTnews. Lindquist lives and works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

for further information contact Miles Manning at 212 463 9666.