To Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald, his sculptures are a means of traveling through time. Working from found materials, Fitzgerald constructs miniature soap box cars and the branded attire of their imagined drivers. Futuristic forms imbued with history, each sculpture is an exercise in imagining the future through the lens of the past – or vice versa.
Entitled “Yesterday,” this helmet & jacket set is a complement to Fitzgerald’s two-dimensional work “Interloper” and appears as a courier from the past. “They may appear as stationary objects,” says Fitzgerald, “but in my imagination, they travel along a track that is continuous and sometimes complex…like how paths in life can lead you back and forth in time.”
This helmet & jacket set belongs to a body of work Fitzgerald calls his “Neighborhood of Infinity,” a borrowed term used literally to refer to the bounty of materials and creative inspiration he found in the industrial landscapes of his childhood in Grand Rapids, MI. For the last decade, Fitzgerald has been mining his early experiences, re-envisioning the mechanical world of his childhood through the eye of an artist.
Oil paint, aluminum tubing, card stock paper, and wood.
