"Pump"(detail) - David Adey


“Pump” is comprised of a mechanical animal respirator with small breathing tubes attached to a football that has been completely re-surfaced by drywall screws, screwed into it like some overstuffed and oversized pin cushion. Every square centimeter of the football has been covered and each screw has been placed at the same depth creating in the end a second pigskin that contours the shape of the ball. As in typical Adey style, there is much more to greet the viewer than what appears to the eye. Once the respirator is turned on, the football begins to breathe, collasping like an artificial lung as it exhales, expanding like a ballon when inhaling. The ratcheting sound the screws make as the ball compresses down like some dried grape in the sun, and the ball’s complete deflation hampered by the screws colliding into one another as the surface area diminishes is errie at best. Its prehistoric crab like movement, though it does not advance and porcupine rigidity as the ball expands makes for one of many strange and bizzare objects Adey has produced. You can “pump fake” a pass in football, you can “pump iron” of course, “pump up the volume” and your tires at the same time and although I may not entirely understand a work like this, the novelty and the sheer idea of fabricating such an object is for me pure genius. I can only imagine the joy and excitement both Adey and Dr. Frankenstein felt as they hit the switch – “It’s alive!” Adey’s objects for me are that constant struggle between animate (the right to live and breathe) and inanimate (the right to live or die being made or ordered by someone else).

“The term animism, often used to describe the belief that objects possess living souls, is commonly held in Africa. This type of figure, commonly known as a fetish in the Western world but called an nkisi nkondi (or Nail Figure) by the Kongo people, was believed to possess hidden, healing powers which allowed people to regain wholeness of mind and body, to settle disputes, and to swear solemn oaths. Medicine packets concocted by the priest were placed in cavities located in the belly and the back of the head, or attached elsewhere on the body in order to activate powerful spirit forces. Medicine also consisted of tile blades and nails hammered into the nkisi nakondi as markers of promises to be kept and formal declarations of good will.”

Does a sculpture entitled “Horse” by Adey possess a living soul too? Is “Horse” a marker of promises kept or un-kept, of countless Almighty Father’s spoken in silence or of untold sins hammered into a weeping stone of sorts, of culpability, shame and the penance served recorded in the surface of the object, perhaps a marker of time, a passage, a gage of one’s “Godliness” – it’s difficult to say. The artist Jonathan Borofsky once made a work entitled “Counting from 1 to 3227146” where – instead of pounding nails - he hand wrote the numbers 1 to 3227146 in successive order on sheets of 8 ½ x 11 paper. Was he serving some higher order? Was Adey?



"Horse" - David Adey


Adey’s “Horse” is not a horse in the way we might imagine a horse to be; it is a saw-horse. A saw-horse is of course, a four legged (headless and tailless) support in wood used to cut lumber on. But Adey’s horse is a black stallion. Its bristling coat is dark and dense as it rears up on its hind legs. It is pummeled with hundreds of 4” drywall screws covering like the football every square inch of it, which gives us the impression of strength, power and stamina. It is fearless as the saw-horse’s front legs kick up in the silent air as there is no sound or motion to it – Adey’s horse has become a statue to contemporary labor, “For Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.”(Issac Watts) While an nkisi nakondi might be an appropriate comparison to these pieces, they are as I’ve mentioned strange objects full of wit and satire. And though I have not spoken in great detail of the “idea” of labor in almost all of Adey’s works, it cannot be ignored that it infuses them with a “wow” factor that I believe the viewer is mesmerized by – if they’re paying attention to what he has done. At the same time, they are constrained by the obviousness of the object and its title and there may be little room for its interpretation and/or meaning – this might hurt in the end an individual works strength and “character” because the viewer, and I think this is normal, is looking for an answer and will jump to a conclusion as to what the object is or what it reminds them of – i.e. recognition and confirmation. This leap of faith just might prevent asking the most essential question that is for me, “why did he make this object?” or “what is its purpose?” If it has no purpose or meaning beyond its formalness – given the title it has been given – then it might be akin to handing someone a square, naming it a circle and asking them to give you the measurement of its diameter. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the humor in Horse, but it alludes to so much more than a one-liner I’m sure.



"Horse"(detail) - David Adey



“Swarm,” “Flower,” “Katie Holmes,” and “Posh + Becks” is another series of works in this exhibition that are simply astounding in their complexity of design and simplicity of idea and manufacture. Over the years, Adey has bought, used and collected “craft punches” that allow you to punch out a myriad of pop culture shapes – stars, hearts, hands, arrows etc. – in paper that range in size of a pinhead to that of a quarter. The punches mainly used as tools for the wildly popular scrap booking craze that has everyone gluing and pasting, are now used in Adey’s hands to make artwork. Over several months prior to the exhibit and through generous donations from friends and family, Adey has been “punching” hundreds of shapes in all different sizes from fashion magazines – but only the flesh tones from the models glamorously displayed within their pages. No ads, no cars, no perfume, just flesh, nothing but flesh in all types of skin tones and colors and then proceeds to resurrect once again, the victim(s). You should know by now, that Adey is incapable of leaving the task at hand at such an elementary level and this is only the raw material. Each punched shaped has then been pinned (crucified) like some entomological collection to a Styrofoam background and turned into some of the most sensual and seductive – devilish and pornographic – orgy of sublime collages I’ve ever seen.



"Swarm"(detail) - David Adey




"Swarm"(detail) - David Adey




"Swarm"(detail) - David Adey


“Swarm” is by far the largest piece which adequately describes the movement, the depth, the flow and build-up of its shapes, swirling in a storm and range of color and “grays” for a lack of a better word, to describe the differences between race and color - white is not always white and neither is black. Though these works are not political in nature I imagine, or about how some(people) wrongfully “judge others by the color of their skin,” had you not known from what source materials they were made, I believe they would still register as these beautifully ornate, intricately delicate and personally intimate offerings or gifts. “Flower” appears to be a flattened and abstracted chrysanthemum or daffodil comprised of concentric rings of petals growing in size toward its edges as it blooms, but as you look closer, Adey has punched out only the lips, with a heart punch, that adds the color and form to the flower’s shape. “Katie Holmes” (top model) and “Posh + Becks” (Spice Girl and Pro footballer) have both been punched out of their respective magazine covers on which they were featured, once again only their flesh tones, and then re-assembled. Reminiscent of 19th century cut-out paper Silhouettes, these pieces might say more about a Hollywood Star’s cracked and fragile persona and one dimensional character than anything else. The works are macabre and haunting in a lot of ways for me; they are ghost like, eyeless zombies, soulless, death masks taken from people that probably shouldn’t be remembered or necessarily idolized, ephemeral bits of pieces of pop culture and manufactured PR fodder for the Paparazzi and the masses. They also recall the current popularity of tattoos and piercing or some ancient tribal markings.



"Swarm"(detail) - David Adey




"Swarm"(detail) - David Adey




"Flower" - David Adey


Finally “Anatomic Particulars” according to Adey, is the transformation of a 2-D image into a 3-D sculptural form. Under a magnifying glass most of the commercial printing being done today can be seen as a series of primary color halftone dots that make up the image, whereas a digital image obviously is built of square pixels. If you enlarge any digital image beyond its optimal resolution, you will see the effects of pixelization. So what would a pixel look like if it was three dimensional? Adey set out to find the answer. “Anatomic Particulars” is a series of about 20 cube combinations as Adey calls them, like a chateau of flesh colored sugar cubes if you will, constructed of smaller 1” square cast urethane resin cubes that hang on the wall. Each combination of stacked cubes are multicolored slices of translucent synthetic flesh that create their own topography of contours, angles, valleys and orifices. It is in the end a sort of absurd chain of how to reproduce an image and in some ways, questions what an image is comprised of after all. Isn’t a painting, drawing, sculpture or similar media just an imitation of nature or mankind, an illusion of space, form, weight, volume, lights and darks? And as humans, are we not experiencing the same illusion by losing touch with the physicality of our environment, no longer exploring and discovering its frontiers and boundaries, instead preferring to receive our sensory information via texting, TV, video or the internet? Have we lost our critical eye blinding accepting what we see in print as reality, no longer curious to examine, search and be sensitive to minuet details and clues? Are we no longer comprised of flesh, blood and a brain?



"Flower"(detail) - David Adey




"Flower"(detail) - David Adey


It may not be any more bizarre to take a digital image of a “live” model, reproduce it on glossy stock in a magazine and present it as an actual living breathing being – as truth (i.e. the photo as a representation of fact or an actual event), then it is to reverse that process, as Adey has done, by bringing an idea or “impression” back into the realm of an object or fact ( i.e. the object exists, it takes up space, it has weight, we can touch it and thus it must be real). It is also I believe a logical extension of Adey’s thinking to push it into the realm of sculpture from the flat cut-outs of the punched shapes found in Swarm and others. The interesting shift might be in the context and scale of these pieces in relation to “Anatomic Particulars” – meaning both works take a piece of a larger whole that is meant to be read as a unique image. The lips in Flower for example become much larger in life and pixelized because we can see more, sort of like looking through a long tube - what we see appears to be larger than it is. Adey has simply blown it up more and shows us that underneath it all there isn’t much to look at nor is there any spirit or soul under that chunk of flesh. Perhaps in the end, we are just carbon copies of one another.



"Katie Holmes" - David Adey




"Katie Holmes"(detail) - David Adey


Adey is a magician and a whore (figuratively speaking of course) turning tricks in an ultimate visual game of pure seduction and sensations, visually re-producing the pleasures of the surface time and time again, of smooth and silky carresses, of warm flesh or cool porcelain skin, of pistals and petals, second kisses second lives second chances and the possibility of dying and ressurection with the hope of redemption. Adey’s work is pure beauty, refined, handsomely made-up, we want to touch it and imagine being immersed deep within it. But we are also afraid of it, afraid of its defense mechanism and rigid exoskeleton. In the end however, it is sex and sexy, but you can’t have any of it – you can only vicariously experience it as a viewer, the pleasure is not to be yours, it is only for its maker. We thank God for the opportunity to have been sinners and the chance to be saved by Adey.


Kevin Freitas



"Posh & Beck" - David Adey




"Posh & Beck"(detail) - David Adey


David Adey is a professor in the Department of Art & Design at Point Loma Nazarene University. Adey received his M.F.A. in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2002. His current exhibit, “Atomic Particulars” at Spacecraft Gallery, 2865 North Park Way, San Diego CA is on view through October 12, 2007. Please telephone 619.291.2752 for more information.



"Anatomic Particulars" - David Adey




"Anatomic Particulars"(detail) - David Adey




"Anatomic Particulars"(detail) - David Adey




"Anatomic Particulars"(detail) - David Adey