Tom Sachs (b.1966, New York) Artist.
Sachs’ genre defying work recreates modern icons using everyday materials, showing all of the work that goes into producing an object - a reversal of modernization’s trend towards products with cleaner, simpler, and more perfect edges. Sachs’s mixed-media sculptures are conspicuously handmade; lovingly cobbled together from plywood, resin, steel, and ceramic. The scars and imperfections in his sculptures and paintings tell the story of how they came into being, removing them from the realm of miraculous conception. His studio team of ten functions like a teaching hospital or cult, that worships plywood and an ethos of transparency.
Sachs’ work has been included in many exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, and is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo. Major solo exhibitions include the The Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2019), The Nasher Sculpture Center (2016), Contemporary Austin (2015), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2009), Fondazione Prada, Milan (2006), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin and SITE Santa Fe (1999). A retrospective of Sachs’ boombox sculptures was presented at The Contemporary Austin (2015) and The Brooklyn Museum (2016). In 2016, The Noguchi Museum hosted a solo exhibition of Sachs’ work—the first by an artist other than Noguchi himself.
Sachs lives and works in New York City.
Photo of Tom Sachs by Mario Sorrenti
