David Umemoto (Canadian, b. 1975) is a sculptor and architect who makes handmade concrete sculptures assembled from modular sections that can be reorganised into new forms. Based in Montreal, he trained and worked as an architect before shifting his focus to sculpture, treating concrete blocks and tiles as a kind of language that can be moved around and recombined.,
Umemoto worked for years designing government buildings and schools, work he found creatively unfulfilling, and describes his shift toward sculpture as an attempt to relearn how to work with his hands.A year spent in Indonesia proved decisive, steering him away from architecture and toward sculpture full time.He founded his studio, No.Bu.Ru, in Montreal in the early 2000s, and also works in digital fabrication using acrylic, wood and metal to make wall art, relief tiles, furniture, vases and lamps.
His early sculptures drew on the primitive arts of Africa, Polynesia and North and South America, producing mysterious forms that could pass for ancient ruins or an imagined jungle city. He also cites the architectural fantasies of Giorgio de Chirico and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and the way M.C. Escher bends space to his own purposes in his prints.Because his sculptures are made almost entirely of concrete, viewers often describe his work as brutalist, an association Umemoto has come to accept even though the same forms made in wood would not read the same way.
In winter 2019/2020, “Architect of the Impossible” at Escher in Het Paleis in The Hague paired Umemoto's sculptures with M.C. Escher's graphic work, the museum's first exhibition to bring the two artists together. He is represented by Modern Shapes Gallery in Antwerp.Since 2015 he has returned regularly to Cubic Geometry Six, a series of concrete sculptures each built within a strict six-by-six-by-six-inch cube using a modular grid. His Primitive Icon wall reliefs grew out of research into primitive art forms that he undertook while working with Cirque du Soleil on hospitality projects. In November 2024 he presented “Interconnections”, a solo show at Art Mûr Gallery in Montreal exploring the relationship between modular concrete structures and organic systems.
