It’s not as though the Queens-based artist just up and started thinking along such apocalyptic lines. He’s been pondering them good and hard, for a long time. Back in 2006, for example, he perpetrated “Prospect,” the bas-relief to end all bas-reliefs, an idyllic sylvan scene (a meadow, a copse of trees) idling atop a wedding cake cross-section of the geological underground, each layer distinct and differentiated, with a thin seam of compressed plastic and metal refuse coursing down below. “The stuff’s positively indestructible,” he noted at the time, “and may well end up being all that’s left to mark our time on this earth.” Tomorrow’s Day Before Yesterday, as it were : a regular laugh riot.

With his current “This Land,” the polarities get reversed. The product of a year’s concerted effort, and to even more compelling effect, offering up, as it were, Yesterday’s Day After Tomorrow. “I’ve been trawling eBay for years,” Mr. Opdyke commented, as he was recently putting his final touches on the piece, “gathering up vintage postcards like these, often in random batches of hundreds at a time. For a long time I was experimenting with repurposing individual cards — had a whole show of those a few years back — but about a year ago, this current project just swam into view and took over my life.”

The father of two (a boy, 14, and a girl, 10) with his wife, Kimberlae Saul , who is an architect, Mr. Opdyke noted, “For years I’ve been feeling the need to do something about the dismal future into which we all seem to be sleepwalking. And yet,” he paused before continuing, “I’m constantly haunted by worry. Can such artistic gestures ever really make any difference , especially given the sheer scale of the challenge?”