ART CITIES: Seoul-Tom Sachs
A relentlessly innovative and subversive sculptor, Tom Sachs is best known for his elaborate, bricolage recreations of masterpieces of engineering and design. Humble foam core and plywood replace the gleaming aluminium and polycarbonate of mass-produced items, fabricated with the combination of industrial vigour and handmade artistry that have become his trademark. The themes central to his universe focus on American culture and society, which he treats with a heavy dose of humour and irony.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Thaddaeus Ropac Galerie Archive
“Rocket Factory Paintings” is the first exhibition dedicated entirely to Tom Sachs’ celebrated breakthrough “Rocket Factory NFT” collection. Fourteen paintings depicting iconically branded Rockets and Rocket Components are on show. Drawing inspiration from the Conceptual art movement between 1968-1972, the “Rocket Factory NFT” collection presents a framework: a series of conditions, a set of rules, but the results are left for the community to decide. From the 150,000+ possible ways to combine the 30 iconically branded Component NFTs, the community gets to choose which 1,000 Rocket NFTs the world deserves. The thirty brands are each pop culture icons, including Chanel, Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Apple, among others. Here, Sachs builds a Rosetta stone between Pop art and Conceptual art. Together, these brands form a self-portrait of the artist, within which viewers might recognise themselves. “Brands form our sense of tribal belonging”, says Sachs about his choices. “In my childhood, at the kitchen table we would discuss dad’s new car or mom’s new dress. Brands are the foundation of the dominant religion of our era – consumerism”. While the current NFT space is largely concerned with creating digital versions of physical artworks, Sachs turns this idea on its head, using the digital Rocket NFTs created by the community as the blueprints for creating physical artworks. The digital rockets are minted and born from the community, but each digital Rocket that Sachs paints is entirely his choice. Each painting on view is derived from the digital art that comprises the Rocket Factory. Originating as a series of digital iPad drawings, the multi-layered NFT collection has become among the artist’s most ambitious projects to date. The quintessential crossover, the Rocket Factory spans the worlds of digital Web 3.0 and the physical plywood-space functioning as a transdimensional manufacturing plant where every Rocket NFT is recreated as a Physical Rocket Sculpture. The exhibition continues the artist’s three-decade-long career, producing handmade recreations of cultural icons by reimagining his own work, and transforming pixels into paintings. These Rocket Paintings represent the golden intersection of three brands and a provocative title. Guided by the materiality of paint, thick impasto brushstrokes crash like waves against clean, hard-edged borders – these are paintings that all follow the same structure, yet are each different. Sachs employs the techniques of traditional oil painting, championed by Abstract Expressionism, and refined by the modern advances of synthetic polymer. While challenging our understanding of art, Sachs continuously prioritises the viscerally handmade object by pulling the metaverse back into the meatspace. Tom Sachs’ “Rocket Factory” is the definitive transdimensional NFT collection, linking physical ‘meatspace’ with the digital cryptosphere. Released in the summer of 2021, the “Rocket Factory” invites the community to assemble three separate Component NFTs into a single Rocket NFT – using the blockchain. The Rocket Factory developed this new Web 3.0 functionality, dubbed ‘comburning’, as a first-of-its-kind method for building new NFTs, using existing NFTs. Every Rocket NFT is built as a physical sculpture at Sachs’ studio in Lower Manhattan. Each Rocket is painstakingly hand-painted to match its digital NFT twin, launched, recovered and shipped to its owner.
Photo: Tom Sachs, Trojan Nose Cone with Birdie Sticker, 2022, Synthetic polymer and Krink on canvas, 121.9 x 121.9 cm, ©Tom Sachs, Courtesy the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac Galerie
Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Galerie, Seoul Fort Hill, 2F, Fort Hill, 122-1, Dokseodang-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea, Duration: 25/6-20/8/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://ropac.net/
