Tom Hecht

Artist Statement

Tom Hecht is a Brazilian American artist based in Manhattan, New York. He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2023 and has a background in architecture. Adopted by an American family, his influences are multipolar, shaping a practice that moves across different cultural and visual languages. He creates mixed media sculptures primarily constructed with fabric.

His work explores how systems of order shape movement, behavior, and perception. Sports motifs provide a visual vocabulary for this investigation. Courts, fields, and other structured environments serve as familiar frameworks through which he considers rules, measurement, repetition, and the ways bodies move within organized space.

Hecht’s semi soft wall sculptures are built in modular sections that come together to form larger compositions. His use of fabric draws from American quilting, garment construction, and upholstery. Pieces are sewn by machine and by hand, then stuffed with synthetic filling to create soft, plush, pillow like forms, sometimes stretched onto wood panels to introduce a more rigid support. By bringing these pillow like parts together, intermediary spaces emerge between them, activating seams, edges, and gaps as sites of tension and relation. He also incorporates hardware such as door hinges and other functional elements, adding articulation and dimensional shifts while bringing in subtle associations of utility and domestic space. This softness is complicated by his use of acrylic paint mixed with pumice, producing highly textured surfaces. Graphic lines and markings are applied over this uneven ground, functioning as a form of drawing that sits in tension with the material softness of the work.

Geometry plays a central role, while the softness of fabric introduces irregularity and touch, allowing structure and looseness to exist at once.

His work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Louisiana, and abroad.