Tom Sachs The Kiss, 2018

A relentlessly innovative and subversive sculptor, Tom Sachs is best known for his elaborate, bricolage recreations of masterpieces of engineering, art and design, fabricated with the combination of industrial vigour and handmade artistry that have become his trademark. The Kiss (2018) is a bronze cast of his plywood version of Constantin Brancusi’s eponymous sculpture from 1916, now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This was the fourth variation on the theme created by Brancusi (1876–1957) and also his most resolutely geometric.

The two embracing figures merge into a single, conjoined form with a vertical line to indicate where their bodies are fused in the middle, with only the curve of her breast and long sweep of her hair differentiating the female from the male. Their two eyes meet to form a single oval, while their hairlines are unified in a continuous arch and their encircling arms are flattened to fit into the rectangular profile of the block. In Sachs’ bronze version, the geometry of the figures is even more rigorous, with the curves of the original translated into squared edges and right angles. As in his plywood sculptures, the marks of making are intentionally left visible, with silver rivets indicating where the bronze pieces have been attached.