Tom Sachs - Space Program

For over a decade, Sachs has pondered the technical ingenuity and romance with the unknown that brought America the Apollo program. This publication documents the culmination of his research: the realization of his own life-size Space Program, comprised of three main sculptural elements (Lunar Module, Mission Control, and Space Suit) and a Flight Plan, all put to use during a live demonstration of a lunar landing. In his exuberant manufacture of objects and scenarios, Sachs asks barbed questions of modern creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation. Space Program features 797 full-color and 30 black-and-white images; a conversation among Buzz Aldrin, Tom Sachs, and Louise Neri; a critical essay by Arthur C. Danto, contextualizing this work among the artist's contemporaries; and a comprehensive discussion of the work by Mark Van de Walle. These are accompanied by appendices that provide a full visual and descriptive account of the innumerable components that make up Sachs's work and illustrate the artist's related drawings and source materials. This comprehensive survey of the work of the young and influential American sculptor Tom Sachs is the first of its kind, and long overdue. Sachs appropriates elements from American popular culture, including fast food, skateboarding and hip-hop music, and mixes them with overt references to luxury fashion labels, as well as icons of Modernist art and design. Even as Sachs's work maintains an overt antagonism toward consumerism and globalization, it reveals an inherent idealism, championing transparency of production and homespun craftsmanship. Produced on the occasion of the artist's solo exhibition at the Fondazione Prada, Milan, this book illustrates the prolific and innovative nature of Sachs's career, highlighting his fascination with weapons, conformity, cultural imperialism and craft. BEAUTIFUL COPY!!.…