TOM DEININGER
1970 Born in Boston, MA.
Lives and works in Rhode Island
Thomas Deininger is a Rhode Island based artist whose work combines environmental concerns with an innovative approach to image making. His found object assemblages are constructed from non-recyclable, non-biodegradable materials that pile up in our nation’s landfills. Works like this provide a thoughtful response to mass consumerism. He asks the viewer to reconsider the potential for transcendence of the mundane. His works are in many private and public collections throughout the world.
In his early twenties, he traveled the world for several years exploring Europe, Central America, and the South Pacific. It was during these explorations that Deininger developed thoughts on American consumerism as he witnessed the frugal resourcefulness of non-industrial cultures and the problems of waste blanketing the shores of distant islands. It was after a trip to the Nantucket landfill that he came up with the idea of making realist assemblages out of found materials. His detritus mosaics are a response to the ways in which mass-produced consumer cultures threaten our natural environment. They also raise questions about value, perspective, and our ability to make meaningful associations and develop thoughtful responses in a media-driven world of endless streams of materials and data.
 Tom Deininger Angle II |
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 Tom Deininger Angle I |
INSIDER: HOW AN ARTIST IS TAKING TRASH AND TURNING IT INTO OPTICAL-ILLUSION SCULPTURES
Tom Deininger builds intricate collage sculptures using discarded items. He pieces them together to form sculptures that are more than meets the eye. Here's how he builds his complex creations.
This is Tom Deininger, sculptor behind these 3D collages. He travels the world collecting objects that will bring these sculptures to life. And thing thing that inspires him is? Junk. And lots of it. So, he began piecing that waste together to make something totally new.
BOSTON POST: TRASH OR WILDLY INVENTIVE ART? IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOUR POINT OF VIEW
A bricolage of action-figures (the Joker, a dinosaur, GI Joe), rusted bike rims, a smashed air conditioner grill. In profile, you see total chaos. Look at it head-on and it’s a stunning mounted deer head.
As Rhode Island artist Tom Deininger sees it, nature is beauty — and trash is, too. Just depends how you look at it. In his artist’s statement, he says he’s turning “[expletive] into sugar.”
COLOSSAL: REPURPOSING THE WORLD’S PLASTIC WASTE: AN INTERVIEW WITH ASSEMBLAGE SCULPTOR THOMAS DEININGER
Every year more than eight million tons of plastic are dumped into our oceans. This anxiety, coupled with fears of a dramatic decline in insect populations and a global climate crisis, fuel the assemblage-based works of Thomas Deininger (previously). In a new short film by gnarly bay, clips of Deininger in his studio are supercut with footage showing the many ways that plastic has laid damage to our world’s sea creatures and environment.