Big Money Bad Boy

Tom Sachs is an industrialist; the industry is "Bricolage", the art of do-it-yourself construction and repair. He is ambitious, hard working, and runs a prosperous studio; he identifies with an American sense of ingenuity and purpose; he consecrates certain consumer brands and even adopts the language of well-known, successful capitalists. Included in a press release for his current show Nutsy’s are the following motivational words from Calvin Coolidge:

Besides being a bona fide businessman, Sachs is also an artisan. With a little arts & crafts magic, some duct tape, and the almighty glue gun, Sachs and his crew at Allied Cultural Prosthetics transform everyday materials into objects of desire.

Sachs got his start in New York as a designer of sorts, dressing windows for Barneys as well as creating speciality merchandising pieces for boutique retailers like Dries Van Noten and Azzedine Alaia. The work that caught the attention of art world insiders was a peculiar, juvenile manger diorama for Barneys holiday storefront. With Bart Simpson as the The Three Wise Men, a six-breasted Madonna Ciccone as the Virgin Mary, and Hello Kitty as the baby Jesus, the irrepressible Sachs offended many. The blasphemous nativity scene made the cover of the New York Daily News and in some ways officially launched his career. These antics cost him his job at Barneys, but Sachs wasn't idle for long. In 1995, the Chelsea gallery of Paul Morris and Thomas Healy gave Sachs his first one-man show.

Sachs has come a long way from his infamous Hello Kitty Christ Child, but hasn't forgotten his early inspiration. Hello Kitty still makes an appearance here and there, but nowadays he is best known for his elegantly crafted guns, toilets, chainsaws, grenades -- even a guillotine -- made out of luxury brand packaging. The work is often times crudely constructed and has violent undertones, but it is still beautiful, with its own original patina. Finished pieces often show their seams, true to Sachs' way of thinking that, "the scars of labor are sort of like tattoos... and by showing the marks, we get credit for our labor." The brand of industry Sachs creates is inspired by cast-offs, the refuse of a consumer society gone mad. High end branded bags and boxes retain some of their former luster, which Sachs harnesses to create his own status symbols of money and power.

Contrary to what you may think, the brands that Sachs appropriates aren't upset by his work. In fact, the fashion industry in particular gets a kick out of it. Apparently, people at the Prada Art Foundation think his Prada Toilet is cool. They even offered him an unlimited supply of shoeboxes.

Sachs' humor is part liberal arts sophisticate, part teenage boy. While we snicker at his clever cultural riffs, what really seems to resonate is the unexpected transformation of an innocuous object, like a Hermes box that morphs into a handgrenade; the work is both lethal and precious. You could say that Tom Sachs has channeled the incongruity of the world and made it into his very own brand.

Tom Sachs the industrialist-cum-artist ridicules and reveres global consumerism by producing his own cultural objects, which in turn create an inspired world full of Franken-fun.

Sarah Cornell
September 2003

Sarah Cornell is freelance writer based in New York, USA.