David Adey
David Adey
David
Adey
b. 1972 STUDIO IN SAN DIEGO, CA
In an era ruled by mediated ways of disseminating information, how do we represent ourselves? David Adey’s work explores the fraught intersection between our physical bodies and the increasingly digitized world they inhabit.
The theme is elegantly addressed in Hide, a series of cut-paper works in which the artist completed a three-dimensional scan of his body using digital imaging software. He then printed, cut, unfolded, and flattened the scan into a two-dimensional representation of his form. The result—over 75,000 triangulated facets mounted in a diptych format—acts as the unpeeled digital skin of his body. At close range, the intricate shapes recall the vocabulary of cartography and geography. At the same time, the image,which looks like a pair of wings from an absent body, speaks to timeless themes of flight and transcendence.
The theme is elegantly addressed in Hide, a series of cut-paper works in which the artist completed a three-dimensional scan of his body using digital imaging software. He then printed, cut, unfolded, and flattened the scan into a two-dimensional representation of his form. The result—over 75,000 triangulated facets mounted in a diptych format—acts as the unpeeled digital skin of his body. At close range, the intricate shapes recall the vocabulary of cartography and geography. At the same time, the image,which looks like a pair of wings from an absent body, speaks to timeless themes of flight and transcendence.
I see this work as a figurative sculpture, in a way. It references classical history as much as it does photography and self-portraiture.
— David Adey
