After the Woods

Arboreal Synopsis

Arboreal, the beginning of After the Woods, is about the relationship between nature and humans. Trees, grass, and Nanoships are the protagonists of the exhibition; the forest is the stage. Nature is presented as an entity, at times gaining consciousness, attitude and a will. Trees act out postures similar to recognized psychological states, and the grass becomes architectural, sharp, and interconnected, while Nanoships battle the landscape. The visual language of the drawings slip between abstraction and figuration, the sculptures are born of the drawings.

Nano War, Considering Armor, Diamond Meat Feast, Wife Disappearance, Into Woods, Night to Knight, Love of Philapores, Chevelure Modernism, Feeding Frenzy, Mothership Tree, Last Escape, and Shell Union comprise the chapters to a story entitled After the Woods, which is currently under development.

The story and work introduces the landscape of the “woods” as an alternate reality, an encoded labyrinth, a backbone, and fantastical internal field, informed by country lore, modern science, and the fancy of fairytales. 

Within this scenario, a man and woman are reunited after nearly a thousand years of separation, framed in time by the era of chivalry and the distant future.

Their separation is the pulp of the story, in which the man becomes a knight in armor with the power to attract the entirety of the elements of the natural order, while the woman, metamorphoses into is a spaceship that similarly to the knight, gravitates to herself the vast participants in the aviatory/space technological order.

She propels the advancement of intelligence in technological development; he speeds the evolutionary growth of plant life to absurd proportions.

The forest they inhabit, inclusive of its creatures, are all affected, and in their own right, develop the privilege of magic, levitation, alchemy, cloning, digitization, and intuitive intelligence.

All the drawings presuppose, in conjunction with the story, multimedia installations, sculptural schematics, performances, animations, a pictographic book that serve to realize the characters, creatures, elements, and events inhabiting the alchemic forest. 

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Essay by Bruce Ferguson