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Rotunda Gallery hosts 'spiritual' urban decay

I have always suspected that trash was holy. That's why I have stray tires, three legged chairs and plastic turtle sand boxes from various curbside discoveries strewn fashionably about my house. That's why I pick up and study everything I find in the dust.

That's also how I came to find a kindred soul in David Adix when I visited his exhibit at the Rotunda Gallery, located on the third floor of the Student Union. Not only has Adix successfully incorporated litter and stray objects into his mixed media pieces, he has also developed a motto to describe his habit.

"There is a spirituality in decay," he says. "Found objects are infused with this."

Found objects either have pieces missing or they are pieces missing from something else. This lonely state of decomposition of all the things one can find is exactly what inspires Adix. He uses them to create mixed media replicas of sacred sites in a style which has a fondness for thick, bulky and gothically dark versions of burial grounds and cathedrals. Even Adix's all-white pieces are layered with misshapen objects and brushstrokes and are full of discomforting weight. When the process of his layering is done, Adix has shrines and other constructions effectively displayed in all their glory of decay. Thus, all of his trash is holy in his exhibit entitled "Sacred Site."

I can only say how jealous I am that he has taken forsaken items to such levels. All of my trash is simply aesthetic. The beauty of it lies in how misplaced I can make it appear in a room. My bulldozer tire, for example, serves me as a coffee table. However, it does not stand in a way that transcends its physical nature or infer the infinite- I forgot to try that.

Unfortunately, David Adix has now beaten me to it. Most of his imagery explores the way orphaned objects destroy boundaries and create passageways to the infinite. One can never see too much potential in trash.

In a piece called "Tower"-one of the edgy, white constructs, Adix transforms particularly pointy objects into cathedral-like structures that puncture the dome of the heavens. The piece beside it on the wall is partly an arrangement of objects resembling Lincoln logs which are used to display the strata of the dead. Spooky.

Adix enjoys giving these kinds of treasured glimpses into the layer just beyond what we normally see-or what we know how to envision. His work includes visual reproductions of the "Megalith" and the "Vortex to the Underworld," which looks like a randomly crafted boat making a circus journey on the river Styx. The Megalith by the way, reminds me of a heavy desk inside of a room, where light shines in from a stained glass window on one side. A desk is a place of worship, study and thought. It is a literal area for boundlessness. If one thinks of it that way it makes sense why a Megalith is such a big holy deal.

Displaying the ethereal alongside decaying matter is almost like adding a fourth dimension. In "Temple of Sun and Moon," a replica of Stonehenge is placed in a shadow formed by the void between the sun and the moon. It plays with our concept of space and time and with the logic that we use for judging things. It brings out the wonderful aspects of these sacred structures and grounds. Something that I found very significant and awe inspiring in its simplicity-it brings out the beauty of trash!