THOMAS BROOMÉ
Story of a collaboration
THE ARTIST
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THOMAS BROOMÉ HAS JOINED A COLLABORATIVE ART PROJECT WITH MASSIMO DUTTI THAT INVOLVES GIVING ITS SHOP WINDOWS AND THE DESIGN OF ITS SPECIAL GIFT PACKAGING A NEW LOOK.
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Renowned Swedish artist Thomas Broomé combines illustration with typography in a sublime way and uses words for his creations. His collaboration with Massimo Dutti involves refreshing its shop windows and designing some original creations: customised boxes that are authentic pieces of art.
What inspires you when you create?
I’m a generalist, and I’m interested in just about everything. When I work, it’s usually in three stages (visually it would look like an inverted pyramid). The first stage is thoroughly gathering all of the information on the topics that interest me. The second stage is a stage where I start to have images in my head and a fuzzy idea of what the story is about. When I say story, I don’t mean a regular one. A canvas is two-dimensional and doesn’t move; a sculpture is three-dimensional and doesn’t move. Visitors move around looking or walking around the work. That’s why even if we say a work is a story, you as the viewer set its pace: your pace. That’s why a work is always a collaboration between the artist and visitor. We create the narration together. And to be able to focus my thoughts and inspirations, I must go on to the third stage. This involves bringing my thoughts together in a solid material, freezing time. This is the most difficult part of the process and a real rollercoaster, both emotionally and physically. When everything is done and the work is finished, it’s as if someone else had done it. It’s at that point when I have to spend time on it and give it a story. But this is only my time; the viewers’ is different. They will always see something different in my work, and that is what is beautiful about being an artist: giving another person a unique experience.
What is your favourite discipline? Digital, sculpture and modelling, etc.?
As a self-taught programmer, one of my main interests is computers. I love them. But I hate travelling, and it’s really difficult to solve problems remotely. On the other hand, no one has ever called me to tell me that my painting or sculpture doesn’t work. They don’t have an operating system that is constantly updated. I’m currently interested in AI-enhanced computer vision, and I’ve bought some amazing cameras that have neural networks on the chip. They’re very interesting.
How did you discover your personal style? How has it evolved?
No man is an island. Everything I do started in minds greater than mine. What I’m doing is taking something that was already there with a new, and hopefully innovative, vision. I made my first text drawings over thirty years ago, and they are still present in my work. My text drawings reflect the original object, and at the same time, the drawing of the object is different. In my new work, I’m exploring what I call MirrorLand, which is simply a word reflected; it’s still the shape, but the word is upside down. I experience today’s world as a mirror of what it was a couple of years ago. There are so many crazy things going on at the same time that I really believe we live in a distortion of what was once real. Did you know that oranges smell like lemons in MirrorLand?
What does Christmas mean to you?
For me, it’s all about family and food! In fact, I trained as a chef at a culinary school, so that time was a real opportunity to cook and enjoy long evenings with my lovely family. Nothing gives me more joy than preparing dinner for my friends and family. Cooking is an act of love, and when the food is eaten, my love is digested and gives energy to those I love. It’s beautiful!
