Bio
Joey Toro is an artist from San Jose, California whose work focuses on capturing the stillness and serenity of retro-digital environments. Joey received their Bachelor of Fine Arts from San Jose State University and completed their Master of Fine Arts at San Francisco State University.
I am creating digital resting places in order to reorient the way in which we allocate our attention to digital media. I strongly believe the current “attention economy” has created a void where slow paced and methodical engagement with the digital media used to exist. The attention we may previously have allocated to an intimate interaction with art, such as a physical painting or sculpture, has been replaced by the abundance of short-form content.
I believe that early CG artists created uniquely dreamlike abstractions that modern methods of production simply cannot achieve. The limited color palettes and blurry textures did their best to represent real world surfaces which often looked convincing but slightly vague and surreal. The angular buildings, cars, people and foliage in these settings created the same effect of depicting recognizable objects but still discernibly unreal. It is the ambiguity and uncanniness of these textures and models that inspire me to create this work.
Selected Work
