"My Melody" by Tom Sachs (2008)
The Lever House, 390 Park Avenue, NYC
by navema
For the Lever House installation, Sachs has created his first monumental works in bronze, presenting the familiar icons “Hello Kitty,” “My Melody” (both fictional characters produced by the Japanese company Sanrio in 1974), and the small rabbit, “Miffy” (created by Dutch artist Dick Bruna in 1955). Working from the original toys, Sachs and his assistants construct enlarged versions using sheets of lightweight foamcore and glue guns, which are then cast in bronze, and ironically painted white to resemble the white foamcore surface. “Hello Kitty” and “Miffy” also function as outdoor fountains.
“For me to do a model of “Hello Kitty”, which is this merchandising icon that exists only as a merchandising and licensed character. To then redo that in a “fine” material like bronze, I think is really to the point. It’s recontextualizing, shifting it back to a high level and making it really, really clear... We try to use materials that suggest the item’s usage, because we are in a world where everything is so perfect and seamlessly made that there’s no evidence of it’s construction, there’s no history. Most things are engineered to resist history. If my work is anything, it is against that theory. I try to show flaws because flaws are human. These details on how things are made show the politics behind how we consume our products... It is sculpture, because it’s talked about, sold, and shown as such. But to me it’s really bricolage, which is the French term for do-it-yourself repair. Bricolage comes from a culture that repairs rather than replaces – American culture just replaces.”
TOM SACHS is a sculptor, probably best known for his elaborate recreations of various Modern icons, all of them masterpieces of engineering and design of one kind or another. Born in New York City in 1966, Sachs grew up in Westport, Connecticut and attended Greens Farms Academy for high school. He attended Bennington College in Vermont. Following graduation, he studied architecture in London before deciding to return to the States and started making sculpture and other art objects.
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 1994, Sachs created a Christmas scene for the windows at Barneys New York entitled "Hello Kitty Nativity" where the Virgin Mary was replaced by Hello Kitty dressed in Chanel and Nike. This contemporary revision of the traditional nativity scene received great attention and demonstrated Sachs' interest in the phenomena of consumerism, branding, and the cultural fetishization of products. In 1997, with the perspective that all "products" are equal, Sachs created Allied Cultural Prosthetics - thereby giving his studio a formal name - and began to utilize logos and design elements from major fashion houses and other instantly recognizable brands in his work.
After several solo exhibitions in New York and abroad, Sachs showed his major installation "Nutsy's" at the Deutsche Guggenheim in 2003. According to one art critic who experienced the installation: "Like Grand Theft Auto, Tom Sachs' current installation for the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin offers a miniature likeness of a reality steeped in the laws of consumerist society. It comes as no surprise that Sachs, a video game enthusiast, ignores the boundaries between "high" and "low": without comment, modernist icons stand as equals next to the flagships of global consumerism and symbols of contemporary leisure culture. Just like in a computer game, visitors to the exhibition get a chance to relinquish the passive role ordinarily accorded to them and become actors in this gigantic bricolage by driving one of the racing cars through the installation."
In 2006, the artist had two major survey exhibitions mounted in Europe, first at the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst and next at the Fondazione Prada, Milan. His work can be found in major museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
"My Melody" by Tom Sachs (2008)
The Lever House, 390 Park Avenue, NYC
by navema
For the Lever House installation, Sachs has created his first monumental works in bronze, presenting the familiar icons “Hello Kitty,” “My Melody” (both fictional characters produced by the Japanese company Sanrio in 1974), and the small rabbit, “Miffy” (created by Dutch artist Dick Bruna in 1955). Working from the original toys, Sachs and his assistants construct enlarged versions using sheets of lightweight foamcore and glue guns, which are then cast in bronze, and ironically painted white to resemble the white foamcore surface. “Hello Kitty” and “Miffy” also function as outdoor fountains.
“For me to do a model of “Hello Kitty”, which is this merchandising icon that exists only as a merchandising and licensed character. To then redo that in a “fine” material like bronze, I think is really to the point. It’s recontextualizing, shifting it back to a high level and making it really, really clear... We try to use materials that suggest the item’s usage, because we are in a world where everything is so perfect and seamlessly made that there’s no evidence of it’s construction, there’s no history. Most things are engineered to resist history. If my work is anything, it is against that theory. I try to show flaws because flaws are human. These details on how things are made show the politics behind how we consume our products... It is sculpture, because it’s talked about, sold, and shown as such. But to me it’s really bricolage, which is the French term for do-it-yourself repair. Bricolage comes from a culture that repairs rather than replaces – American culture just replaces.”
TOM SACHS is a sculptor, probably best known for his elaborate recreations of various Modern icons, all of them masterpieces of engineering and design of one kind or another. Born in New York City in 1966, Sachs grew up in Westport, Connecticut and attended Greens Farms Academy for high school. He attended Bennington College in Vermont. Following graduation, he studied architecture in London before deciding to return to the States and started making sculpture and other art objects.
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 1994, Sachs created a Christmas scene for the windows at Barneys New York entitled "Hello Kitty Nativity" where the Virgin Mary was replaced by Hello Kitty dressed in Chanel and Nike. This contemporary revision of the traditional nativity scene received great attention and demonstrated Sachs' interest in the phenomena of consumerism, branding, and the cultural fetishization of products. In 1997, with the perspective that all "products" are equal, Sachs created Allied Cultural Prosthetics - thereby giving his studio a formal name - and began to utilize logos and design elements from major fashion houses and other instantly recognizable brands in his work.
After several solo exhibitions in New York and abroad, Sachs showed his major installation "Nutsy's" at the Deutsche Guggenheim in 2003. According to one art critic who experienced the installation: "Like Grand Theft Auto, Tom Sachs' current installation for the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin offers a miniature likeness of a reality steeped in the laws of consumerist society. It comes as no surprise that Sachs, a video game enthusiast, ignores the boundaries between "high" and "low": without comment, modernist icons stand as equals next to the flagships of global consumerism and symbols of contemporary leisure culture. Just like in a computer game, visitors to the exhibition get a chance to relinquish the passive role ordinarily accorded to them and become actors in this gigantic bricolage by driving one of the racing cars through the installation."
In 2006, the artist had two major survey exhibitions mounted in Europe, first at the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst and next at the Fondazione Prada, Milan. His work can be found in major museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.