Tom Sachs

Contemporary American artist Tom Sachs (born 1966, New York) studied at the Architectural Association in London and received a BA from Bennington College, Vermont.

His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally, and is held in major institutional collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo.

Tom Sachs is probably best known for his elaborate recreations of various Modern icons, all of them masterpieces of engineering and design of one kind or another. In an early show he made Knoll office furniture out of phone books and duct tape; later, he recreated Le Corbusier’s 1952 Unité d’Habitation using only foamcore and a glue gun. Other projects have included his versions of various Cold War masterpieces, like the Apollo 11 Lunar Excursion Module, and the bridge of the battleship USS Enterprise. And because no engineering project is more complex and pervasive than the corporate ecosystem, he’s done versions of those, too, including a McDonald’s he built using plywood, glue, assorted kitchen appliances. In addition to Miffy Fountain, Sachs has also done Hello Kitty and her friends in materials ranging from foamcore to bronze.

“TOM SACHS: “CONSUMERISM WAS A RITUAL”