Tom Sachs Space Program: Europa
Yerba Buena Center For The Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Tom Sachs and his team of astronauts set their sights on the next frontier of space exploration in Space Program: Europas. Targeting Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, this expansive sculpture exhibition offers an unprecedented view into Sachs’ extraordinary artistic output and advances his quest to find extraterrestrial life with bricolaged sculptures. The exhibition will fill YBCA with everything his astronauts need to successfully complete their voyage—including the Mobile Quarantine Facility, Mission Control, the Apollo-era Landing Excursion Module (LEM), and special equipment for conducting scientific experiments—immersing the audience in a universe of sculpture occupying the entire downstairs galleries in addition to YBCA’s public spaces.
Space Program: Europa will feature live activations of the Europa flight plan by Sachs’ astronauts during the opening and closing weekends. In these demonstrations, the astronauts will showcase the rituals and procedures of their mission, including the cultural export of chanoyu, the ancient art of the tea ceremony. Stay tuned for more information about the closing weekend. In the meantime, come by for a screening of A Space Program, a film that captures Sachs’ 2012 mission to Mars.
Sachs has also created a new site-specific installation, Logjam Café. Logjam Café will be open to the public as a neighborhood coffee shop, occasional bar, and OCD rehab center, where visitors can experience firsthand the artist’s obsession with the tools of his craft.
Tom Sachs’ Space Program: Europa exists in a universe with Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony, presented at the Noguchi Museum from March 23 to July 24, 2016. The project continues, post-Europa, in a return to earth and Tea Ceremony, at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, September 9, 2017 to January 7, 2018.
