2022 marks the 20th anniversary of adFunture as a label, as a toy maker, and as a collaborator. It had its ups and downs, fun and not-so-fun, but all in all a good road travelled. We had the opportunities and honour to work with some of the most elite artists of our time, I cherish the process and conversations we had in between. We had experienced the roles of a trading company, a full-blown toy factory, and a 50-pieces-order-beggar, we know how it feels in each position. We had exhibited on cafeteria-tables, to the coolest shop in Europe, to internationally respected museum, we had fun travelling to learn different cultures. I’ve made more friends in the toy business than all of my school-years combined. You won’t believe that there was a time the designer toy world was ran by a bunch of grown kids who can’t wait til the convention is over and rush to the nearest bars, and got too wasted to sit behind the booth the next morning. At one point we had enough profits for me to blown on opening a sneaker boutique and launch our own clothing label with stores in three cities, and then there were times (most of the time) we can’t make the ends meet. Looking back, it was a fun journey. But believe me, when I made those moves they seemed all natural steps to take (some begged the differ, usually my other-half at that specific time, but you know I don’t listen). We witnessed the booms and the recessions, with different waves and generations of collectors joining our scene. That’s just how it is, just like sports trading cards. We’ve been quiet over the last few years, mostly on purpose. We had significantly cut down on projects in recent years, because we understand not everything should be made into a product, and the more art toys being made, the more “toy” and less “art” they become. Going into our 20th year, we have no specific goals, no sales target to meet, we will only get into projects/collaborations that we wholeheartedly like. Is more fun when you don’t have an agenda.
I remember how adFunture got into making art toys with graffiti artists. I was in Hong Kong at the time, I flipped through different graffiti books in different bookstores, and the visuals just caught me, and I started reaching out to the artists via email. Yes, there were no instagram back then and not a lot people on facebook yet, so my sources were books and Marc & Sara’s WoosterCollective. Over the last 20 years, I got to check off the names of my favourite artists on my “list” with every collaboration, all but two, and one of them was DELTA. We were in contact for years, but for some odd reason we never did anything together until now. Great timing, too. Thank you, Boris, for the opportunity. This might mark an end of a journey or it might be a start of something fresh, who knows, who cares, just go with it.
DELTA (Boris Tellegen) — CHECK.
Lastly, we would like to thank you, our friends, our collectors. Thank you for sharing our interests over the years, it is special to know that you like what we like. This, via our curation, is how we interact. I hope to meet some of you again when we travel to different countries for exhibitions again. In the meantime, please take care.
Sincerely,
EDDI
