Artist Statement
My work explores failed promises of technology through the creation of furniture by utilizing digital fabrication, found objects, and unconventional materials. Technology does not always indicate progress, and I am interested in the various ways that technology has succeeded and failed in improving our domestic lives. Digital fabrication, material reuse, sustainability, and multi-functionality are all themes that I combine, remix, and take to their extreme to create objects that reflect on contemporary society. I use various materials, found objects, and technologies to negate their history, instead of forging ahead with a new narrative, mitigating their past traumas. The work reflects on the cultural conflicts by embodying opposites like absurdity and functionality, scarcity and overabundance, luxury and poverty, digital and analog.
Bio
Toomas Toomepuu was born in Rhode Island, now resides and studies in Detroit, attending College for Creative studies. Growing up, he had an affinity for exploring and painting abandoned spaces, found materials, and piecing together different structures with those materials. As a child, these structures were typically bike ramps or tree houses. These tendencies continued throughout his early adulthood, but evolved into the fabrication of furniture and sculpture instead. Maintaining interests in between spaces and materials, he continues to develop aesthetic relationships and reflect on the conceptual conversations explored in these objects.