198 @ Ade's Storage Unit

For me there’s nothing better than getting to go through someone's shit. A good storage unit, a garage, a studio or whatever; anything packed to the tits with junk and stuff is always fun to scrounge through. In preparation for issue two, documenting Ade’s work, chatting about his practice, I finally got to scratch that itch and go through a good storage unit.

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Central to Ade’s work is the semiotic nature of the materials he’s working with–their ability to transcend language and associations, while simultaneously catering to those same associations. I find myself trying to connect this idea of materiality and semiotics and associations and whatever else– to the storage unit.

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I go into Ade’s storage unit with a certain understanding of him as a person, I leave with a new one. We talked a bit about his practice; his work functions much in the same way. We view work with our own understandings of the content and the context, we leave with new ones.

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Again, Ade’s work is rooted in materiality. Working in sculpture and installation, primarily metal and concrete, his work references the environment he has, and still does, exist within. It’s successful because it can be understood locally and globally. There is an understanding and an agreement that there’s something going on, there’s something in there.

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There is a universal quality to his work, it can be understood in a myriad of ways because these things, these associations inherent to the medium, exist in the same fashion. Whether we’re drawn to things because they are functional as they were intended to be or functional by way of losing that original function, metal and concrete and things of this nature are familiar to most. Ade’s affinity for metal/concrete/whatever, derives from, what for him, is there super-normal nature, whereas for me the draw comes from a sort of unfamiliarity– a curiosity, with and for this environment. This is where I feel a connection to the storage unit. The contents of a storage unit are familiar and understood in their own right by the owner. This understanding differs for the visitor/the viewer/the stranger/the curious/the nosey.

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I think things are important. Ade makes things, his storage unit’s got stuff, and he’s got experiences. I love looking at things and stuff and whatever else. We talked more about this and his work, I’ll write more about that for the magazine. For the blog I just had to write about the storage unit. About stuff and things and shit. There’s something in there, it’s good. Read more in Issue 02: Deconstructed.

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