Film UbuWebTom Sachs (b. 1966)
Space Program 2 Mars (2011)
Tom Sachs, born in 1966, lives and works in New York, his native city. Sachs re-envisions modern iconography, masterpieces of engineering, and popular and industrial inventions of the 20th century. He revisits, in model form, both history-making space shuttles and the MacDonald’s workplace. From the module of Apollo 11 to Hello Kitty, Sachs plays with genres and “brand image”. In fact, he doesn’t refrain from taking major luxury brands and ripping them out of their contexts. The themes central to his universe focus on American culture and society, which he treats with a heavy dose of humor and sarcasm. Attentive to detail and the finished result, he executes his work using both high and low materials. Most often, his models are created out of foamboard, and some of his sculptures are cast in bronze. Sachs is a sculptor in the classical sense of the term. Like a Carl Zeiss lense, his unique designs break down the history of our production techniques even as they underline the meaning behind them, from their excellence to their alienation.