This body of work includes two spatially separate but conceptually linked areas titled the Vibraten and Aeraten “territories.”  These “territories” were originally conceived in the summer of 2000 in the form of a written narrative.  Loosely based on personal experience, that text dealt with issues like science fiction, military strategy, and pop psychology as seen through the eyes of a young cadet in a futuristic military academy.  The sculptural forms in this exhibition function as scenes derived from that narrative.

The objects were chosen based on their ability to transmit a variety of information.  For example, the blue umbrellas and bottles in the Vibraten Territory represent a melange of romantic idealism and blue-collar melancholy.  Similarly, the golden garbage cans and tripods of the Aeraten Territory may be seen as threatening, Postmodern icons or ridiculous space vehicles.  The transformed objects, in conjunction with the “ghost” characters, set the stage for a classical narrative, albeit in the third dimension, of good versus evil with the fate of the world at stake.

I think of these “territories” as theatrical sculpture, an essentially static situation, with maximum mutability by virtue of their narrative ambiguity.  They are metaphoric, although not specific; a self-styled road map leading toward a philosophy that is at once jaded and hopeful, ultimately self-conscious and hypocritical, but always pointed toward the future.

Shaw T. Fici