Tom Sachs' show of recent work (May 8 - June 21) at Sperone Westwater (http://www.speronewestwater.com) in the meatpacking district of Manhattan reveals the 41 year old New Yorker DIY re-appropriator with still a lot to say. Sachs is probably best known for his (infamous) concentration camp fabricated from a Prada hatbox, his candy jar of 9-mm bullets (which led to his [then] gallery owner Mary Boone being arrested for a night), and his various misuses of Hello Kitty. And while shock value still has its place in his work today, the strongest pieces go way beyond catty conversations among culturati in martini bars.
The best pieces in the show are "handmade" (more on this in a second) constructions -- boxes, cabinets, odd lamps, Duchampian ready-made-aided works -- which show both an eye to artisanal detail (like inset slots and toggles for keys and hooks) and awkward do-it-yourself bricolage (e.g. hand-burnt letters, exposed wiring).
Particularly stunning is Sachs' "Negro Music": a ghetto blaster and tons of tapes (and a bottle of Jack) safely locked away in a laboratory glove box (through rubber gloves you can switch tapes, hit play, rewind... the Jack Daniels however remains unassailable). The strange protection offered is of course an illusion, for the sound comes through... as too the disturbing image of white culture testing, genetically modifying, appropriating and taming black cultural production.
The political reappears in other whimsical ways. Sachs' "Waffle Bike" -- a tricked out bike (riffing off Puerto Rican bikes in New York) with attached refrigerator, waffle maker, a cage for chickens, a flag pole (Norway) and loud speakers (broadcasting Arabic) proclaims a untenable melding of northern European cuisine and Southern itinerant street sellers. The only thing lacking is seeing it in action. And syrup.
In the same way, the kooky "LaGuardia", a observation tower for cats (built on several levels with stairs: liter box, goldfish pond, observation deck...) is both whimsical and disturbingly prison like (what are these cats surveilling?!).
I loved the mandela meets Renaissance dueling cabinet gun chest "Hardcore" in which handmade guns and the tools that were used to make them (pliers, hammers, etc.) -- all lovingly inscribed or etched with punk band names and the track listings from their albums -- are elegantly ensconced and sealed in a beautiful mirrored plywood case. Once again, a "dangerous" cultural production (hardcore punk, a Brechtian hammer) has been aestheticized and sealed off, but the keys are close to hand and the case can travel. (I would gladly have opened up the case and started to play... but the gallery do-not-touch-ethos is hard to fight).
I am not enraptured by everything that Sachs puts out. His foamcore whales, Hello Kittys, pyrographic reproductions of animal fable engravings (do grandparents still give wood burning kits to their grand kids? do you remember the smell of the wood burning under the smoldering stylus?) leave me cold.
Even more so, I do not know what to make of artistic productions that involve -- Renaissance atelier style -- the mobilization of a crew of (14) assistants (like Peter Halley, Jeff Koons, Sol Lewitt...). It seems to me that "DIY" has a hard time surviving a capitalist production method no matter how artisan-based its ethics. It would be more honest if each and every one of the assistants added their name to the masthead... but that dilemma is also a part of Sachs' attack.
[addendum 6/27: Sachs "handmade" boxes have brought me back (by antithesis) to thinking about Toland Grinnell (a Brooklyner, born in 1969) whose work has prominently featured creepy sets of elaborate and luxurious traveling cases and collapsable furniture in Vuitton-style precision. The design-centered detail of Grinnell's work has always been a stumbling block for me.
(Here's an interesting interview with Grinnell from 2003: http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag03/nov03/grinnell/grinnell.shtml.
Grinnell's "Pied-à-Terre" was on longterm display at the Brooklyn Museum through last May: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/toland_grinnell/ )]
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