Tom Sachs: "31 Rue Cambon" Interview
By Elisa Carollo
The artisanal spirit of the bricoleur animates Tom Sachs’s art, alongside a postmodern, deconstructive impulse aimed at interrogating the symbolic and narrative dynamics that establish material value. Large symbolic systems have long nourished his practice of sustained world-building. That was the case with his multi-year NASA project, Space Program (2007-present), through which he reimagined the mythology of the space mission through handcrafted sculptures made from everyday materials like plywood, cardboard, foam core, duct tape and hot glue. Sachs had done something similar earlier with Nutsy’s (2003-2005), which linked the idealistic modernism of Le Corbusier with the commercialized modernism of McDonald's.
Building on this legacy, the provocative American artist has unveiled his latest endeavor: a homemade and unauthorized Chanel flagship in Chinatown. Notably, the street where it is located, Centre Street, with Maman and Champagnerie on either side, is now called “Little Paris,” as a sign hanging next door suggests, adding an eerie coincidence, an ironic dimension or perhaps simply a synchronicity of chance to an operation that brings Chanel’s historic 31 Rue Cambon boutique in Paris to Chinatown.
“I just like making stuff,” Sachs told Observer when we met for a preview of the project in late August. Entering from the side door, we found his studio far tidier than one might expect from the explosiveness of his creativity—it was almost unnervingly orderly. “Everything is really in the other rooms; you’ll see the chaos. This room is kind of empty because the show is finished,” he was quick to point out. “We just cleared it out, and I’m starting my next thing.”
Sachs’s studio is always in motion, as he’s always making something. “I’m not happy unless I have some little thing to make,” he said, recalling how he used to make rockets from dry-cleaning cardboard and telescoping tampon applicators, improvising with whatever materials were available. Although he was initially forbidden to use his father’s tools, he secretly took them from the basement. “My mother taught me to refinish furniture, paint, decorate and repair things because she was very handy, but I wasn’t allowed to use power tools. I was forbidden to use tools because my father didn’t really know how to use them either. His parents wanted him to become a pianist or a doctor. But we had tools in the basement, and I would sneak them.”
