Discovered at Concéntrico 2020, Art furniture collection presents Tuomas Kuure’ way of working wood and observing the world. The Finnish artist-maker, who crafts wooden art furniture in Bilbao (Spain), is executing all the working stages by himself. The pieces are inevitably unique due to a meticulous selection of the grain directions and the crafting process that often includes breaking the material. However, the potential of the designs is greater than an alone one-off piece. They can be regenerated through special editions changing the timber, details and colours.A piece of furniture can move us, make us think, guide us in front of the purest, most graceful landscapes of the human mind. Furthermore, because of some key differences in their respective working processes, there is a necessity for the definition of “art furniture”. There are many great craftsmen walking that path yet the pair of words seldomly appear together. Wendell Castle is said to be the father of the movement but also Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima and Sam Maloof have been strongly marking the way for today’s designers, functional sculptors or artists, whichever standpoint you choose.Tuomas Kuure (born 1984) after working in modern-day workshops in Helsinki, London and Hamburg he knew that other materials are for perfection and decided to work wood for finding the various aesthetic qualities of it. In 2014, he started creating his own art furniture collection, understanding the woodworking as an intensive medium of being in touch with form, colour and time. From the first sketch starts the mission of finding the steps to engineer and craft a durable piece of furniture. Besides serving the actual and decorative purpose, some furniture may have the ability to fulfil the main function of an art piece.Wood was presented to Tuomas as a material for making things at the age of nine. As a youngster, he was mainly throwing logs to the fire but finally, it led him to learn more about woodworking. Apparent failures by the maker of the material not only serve as an inspiration but sometimes they reveal the very soul of the piece.

Sometimes expressing with abstract, others symbolic or impressionistic means, the concepts are well-fitting to the post-contemporary paradigm. The pieces are made by a person who couldn’t be a designer, a cabinet maker, a sculptor in this era but wanted to fly all the fields.Lethal Experiment, 2014. Photo by Vicente Paredes

Coffee table in Balsa Wood. “In the top view of the piece appears the shape familiar to us from the ionizing radiation sign. The sediments and the fortuitous cracks that nature creates… path seen in the middle of the piece.”


13 Minutes. Photo by Iranzu Guijarro
The bar cabinet can be viewed as a part of a 3,5-metre diameter clock. On the horizontal plane is the golden present, almost a perfect projection of its nearest past. As time goes by the reflection, also in the grain pattern, becomes less evident. The minutes stretch and shrink depending on their meaning to us. They change their colour and inclination with our moods and the surrounding events.

Causal. Photo by Iranzu Guijarro

“The grain colours of the two vertical pieces are very different from each other to point out how differently we are able to see ourselves depending on our current condition. The top part is oak, slightly darkened with ammonia to complement the chestnut. I wanted to have another specie of timber to further underline our layered state of being. Its shape and structure, together with the colours of the bottom are hinting the energy fields that are inextricably part of us.”