29 March – 3 May 2014

American Handmade Paintings was anchored in specific aspects that are dear to Tom Sachs’s creative universe; his use of the American landscape as iconography and his endeavor to draw our attention to the way the works are made. Traces and marks of the handicraft were voluntarily left visible and become an integral part of the work.

This exhibition featured mainly wall works highlighting two distinct techniques in Tom Sachs’s practice: pyrography and marquetry. By using fire as the sole drawing tool, pyrography permitted to create a work without any additional material, while the craft of marquetry was a complex assembly of pre-painted, inlaid elements.

Consumerism, corporate identity, cultural imperialism, technological progress, identity and the loss of it, the relation of survival and destruction are all at the heart of Tom Sachs’s work.

In this exhibition, Sachs’s meticulously handcrafted paintings depicted such diverse topics as the Goodwill logo, a McDonald’s sign in Chinese, the famous Scotch tape package and the American flag; all modern icons that document successes and failures of the American experience and the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in its society and culture.