Overview
Tom Sachs’s “sculptures” follow an almost dadaist pattern; he provokes by using an explosive mixture of vanity and luxury items in juxtaposition with violent objects.
Our upcoming exhibition with the New York artist Tom Sachs in january 1999 will consist of his very latest sculptures and one very alarming installation. Tom Sachs’s “sculptures” follow an almost dadaist pattern; he provokes by using an explosive mixture of vanity and luxury items in juxtaposition with violent objects. The artist offers the viewer an idealistic approach to art in form of thinly disguised criticism. On one hand, he satisfies the viewer’s appetite for glamour and luxury products by using for example a Prada cardboard to build a toilet, yet on the other hand, he places them in context with hostile and violent objects, such as a Chanel guillotine or mass products such as a Mc Donald tray wrapped in Tiffany cardboard. “Most of the packaging I use is other people’s rubbish” says Sachs. He has, nontheless, some cladestine contacts within the fashion houses who supply him with cardboard packing he often uses. Sachs’s obsession with fashion in connection with violence derives from his belief that ”fashion and fascism are almost the same thing”. During the time that Sachs worked as a fashion window designer for Barney’s, he always managed to include unsettling elements in his installations. For example, he created clothes racks for Azzedine Alaia by welding together 22,000 pennies, or made chairs out of shopping carts for Dries van Noten. Sachs sees himself as “a professional hobbyist and bricoleur” which probably explains his approach to his sculptures where he often usÅes tape and leaves roughly disguised traces of his tools.
