The Artist: Tom Sachs

By George Nelson

Whenever I chew the fat with Tom Sachs, our conversations veer off-piste through the long grass. That’s no bad thing. I called him this week to discuss 31 Rue Cambon, the show he recently laid on at his New York studio with Thaddaeus Ropac, and we didn’t dwell on the nuts and bolts of the work for too long.

Speaking from said studio, he told me that he’s always been interested in the things the ordinary bloke off the street can’t always have. He wanted a Chanel suit. He wanted a Leica camera. He wears a Casio, although he wouldn’t say no to a Rolex, despite it not being his “kink”.

Instead of buying the object, or simply accepting that he couldn’t have it, Sachs started making versions of it himself. In the process, he told me, something happens to desire. “Through making the object, my lust for it is transformed into love, but not of the object,” he said. “It’s more the love of the making of the object.”

31 Rue Cambon, which consisted of 31 “Chanel” suits made out of three-quarter-inch plywood, encapsulated this idea. Sachs transformed his SoHo studio into a fully realised Chanel boutique, complete with handmade versions of the house’s signature suits, accessories, packaging and retail displays.

He painstakingly painted and textured the plywood surfaces to mimic tweed and embroidery. Handmade jewellery incorporates Lego elements and bicycle reflectors, alongside furniture inspired by Coco Chanel’s Parisian apartment. A custom soundtrack, blending ambient music and horror-film scores with archival Chanel advertising, added to the effect.

Nothing was wearable, and almost nothing was what it appears to be. The joke was that these crude materials have required labour at almost couture level. But if the price of the original is part of what makes us desire it, what happens when you remove the price and leave the labour?