Acquavella Galleries to Present “Tom Sachs: Handmade Paintings” November 5–December 18, 2020
Acquavella Galleries is pleased to announce that they will present an exhibition of recent paintings by Tom Sachs from 2019-2020. Although painting has been a focus of the artist’s practice since the mid-1990s, Tom Sachs: Handmade Paintings, which will feature entirely new works, represents the first exhibition to focus exclusively on Sachs’ work in the medium. This exhibition will also mark the artist’s first show with the gallery. Currently, the exhibition is scheduled for November 5–December 18, 2020.
Over the last three decades, Tom Sachs has constructed objects that examine and critique modernity, whether in sculpture, roughly hewn paintings, or ambitious, large-scale installations. Mining popular culture for iconography, Sachs investigates themes of corporate and cultural identity—such as consumerism, branding, technology, and cultural dominance—to explore the achievements, failures, and contradictions of society. Representing familiar brands and commodities in his distinctively handcrafted aesthetic, Sachs draws attention to the way his objects are made, thereby deconstructing the powerful and complex systems these modern logos and brands represent. “There is power in logos and there is power in good advertising,” according to Sachs.
In his paintings, Sachs examines the relationship between his two and three dimensional work. “To understand the painting, you first must understand the sculpture, and that these things are made. These objects are constructed and have evidence of their construction,” says Sachs. “They are sculptures made with painting materials, like canvas and paint, and paintbrush. They come out of my experience of building things.”
Tom Sachs (b.1966, New York) Artist.
Sachs’ genre defying mixed media sculptures, often recreations of modern icons using everyday materials, show all of the work that goes into producing an object – a reversal of modernization’s trend towards products with cleaner, simpler, and more perfect edges. Sachs’s sculptures are conspicuously handmade; lovingly cobbled together from plywood, resin, steel, and ceramic. The scars and imperfections in the sculptures tell the story of how it came into being and remove it from the realm of miraculous conception. His studio team of ten functions like a teaching hospital or cult, that worships plywood and an ethos of transparency.
Sachs’ work has been included in many exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, and is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo. Major solo exhibitions include the The Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2019), The Nasher Sculpture Center (2016), Contemporary Austin (2015), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2009), Fondazione Prada, Milan (2006), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin and SITE Santa Fe (1999). A retrospective of Sachs’ boombox sculptures was presented at The Contemporary Austin (2015) and The Brooklyn Museum (2016). In 2016, The Noguchi Museum hosted a solo exhibition of Sachs’ work—the first by an artist other than Noguchi himself.
Sachs lives and works in New York City.
Contact: David Simantov