Published by Sperone Westwater, New York. Edited by Alex Chohlas-Wood. Interview by Glenn O'Brien.
This volume presents Tom Sachs’ most recent bricolage sculptures, some of which play off works by Lichtenstein and Richter, as well as singer James Brown, African sculpture and Sèvres porcelain. Several of these paintings incorporate Sachs’ pyrography technique, whereby “paint strokes” are burned and etched into the wood surface.
PUBLISHER Sperone Westwater, New York
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 8.5 x 11 in. / 120 pgs / 59 color / illustrated throughout.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 7/31/2012 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2012 p. 148
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780982837269TRADE List Price: $45.00 CDN $55.00
Published by Des Moines Art Center. Edited by Ellen R. Feldman. Text by Jeff Fleming, Raphaela Platow.
Tom Sachs has a cardboard box in his studio into which he throws miscellaneous screws, nuts and bolts after he has attempted, unsuccessfully, to use them in a project under production. Instead of wasting time categorizing and storing them, he throws them into the box until needed again. The box, labeled "Logjam," exemplifies Sachs' working method and his response to the world: he needs to make things; everything else just gets in the way. Published to accompany the artist's first one-person museum exhibition in the United States, which traveled from Des Moines, Iowa, to Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2007, this handy artist's-book-cum-inventory-cum-exhibition-catalogue documents what may be Sach's most personal show to date--focusing on two bodies of work that are actually about the process of art-making, Sachs' "work" and "living" stations. Readers will enjoy the rounded edges of this small gem, the full-bleed photographs and the blunt, highly personal captions describing the artist's "Essential Tools".
PUBLISHER Des Moines Art Center
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 6 x 8 in. / 172 pgs / 95 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2008 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 145
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781879003491TRADE List Price: $16.95 CDN $20.00
Published by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Text by Vernard R. Lewis, Cheryl Kaplan.
Islandia: Further Explorations of Man's Contempt for Nature features Tom Sachs's most recent body of work, accompanied by a scientific article on termites. Sachs is not part of a current movement in contemporary art; rather he has developed his own artistic language. He is particularly interested in the function, the form and the essence of everyday common objects. In the manner of a bricoleur, he expresses a very personal connection to these "things"--dissects, reconstructs and appropriates them by handcrafting meticulous personal replicas thereof. Consumerism, corporate identity, cultural imperialism, technological progress, identity (and the loss of it), the relationship of survival and destruction are all at the heart of Tom Sachs' sculpture and drawings. The work collected here exposes the genetics and behavior of technology, using refrigeration, chemicals, insects, corporations and a trash can, among other leftovers, as a way to mirror and diagram the push/pull of physics. Sachs is interested in acts of displacement, where one thing, person or company overrides or attempts to consume another. In re-presenting common items like a refrigerator, an air-conditioner and a Hooter's menu, Sachs stages these objects not only as visual propaganda, but as an indication of a failed promise. But what should that promise have been and why are we left with such degradation? As Sachs reveals, in a world that's no longer analog, "human traces have been erased."
The owner's/operating manual for Tom Sach's monumental new sculpture, "The Island," a modified working model of the radar tower of the USS Enterprise CVN-65, "The world's first and finest nuclear powered aircraft carrier." Sachs writes, "'The Island' is a process. There is nearly always something broken or in need of repair. This book is designed to help you cope with managing the many issues associated with ownership/operation of 'The Island.' It is helpful to get an understating of what 'The Island' needs, what it does, and what it can do; as a clubhouse it can provide a safe environment for good times--just add people. Of course people are messy and break things. So it's important to clean up and maintain systems and maintain supply levels. Just like the Enterprise of the U.S. Navy, whose painting crew paints continuously for 35 years of operation, there is always something that needs your attention on 'The Island.'"
PUBLISHER Allied Cultural Prosthetics
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 11 x 8.5 in. / 56 pgs / 161 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2007 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2007 p. 155
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780979049903TRADE List Price: $30.00 CDN $35.00
Published by Fondazione Prada. Edited and with essay by Germano Celant. Preface by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli.
This comprehensive survey of the work of the young and influential American sculptor Tom Sachs is the first of its kind, and long overdue. Sachs appropriates elements from American popular culture, including fast food, skateboarding and hip-hop music, and mixes them with overt references to luxury fashion labels, as well as icons of Modernist art and design. Even as Sachs's work maintains an overt antagonism toward consumerism and globalization, it reveals an inherent idealism, championing transparency of production and homespun craftsmanship. Produced on the occasion of the artist's solo exhibition at the Fondazione Prada, Milan, this book illustrates the prolific and innovative nature of Sachs's career, highlighting his fascination with weapons, conformity, cultural imperialism and craft.
Published by Guggenheim Museum Publications. Edited by John G. Hanhardt. Essays by John G. Hanhardt, Maria-Christina Villase“or and Glenn O'Brien.
Using foam core, hot glue, plywood, steel, scavenged street lumber, asphalt, a radar gun, liquor, turntables and LPs, Tom Sachs has built a 4,000-square-foot installation that links the idealistic modernism of Le Corbusier with the commercialized modernism of McDonald's. Remote-control cars and their racetrack form the connective tissue that binds the disparate parts of Nutsy's together, from the ghetto and Modernist art park to the bong-hit station and piss station. Representing the culmination of Tom Sachs's studio activity over the past two years, Nutsy's was originally inspired by Le Corbusier's 1952 Unit d'Habitation housing block--a massive 12-story structure which has come to symbolize both the integrity of modernism as well as its subsequent corruption. In thinking about modernism's ideals, Sachs--ever the bricoleur--was driven to explore its other side. Modernism and bricolage act as a kind of foil for each other in Nutsy's, with the resourcefulness of bricolage standing in contrast to the grandiosity of Modernism.
Tom Sachs: Logjam
Tom Sachs: Islandia
Tom Sachs: The Island
Tom Sachs
Tom Sachs: Nutsy's