In Ritual, Tom Sachs reflects on consumerism while dealing with the history of New York City and American culture at large. Influenced by the subcultures of an urban metropolis, particularly those surrounding its corner stores and laundromats, the artist replicates commonplace industrial objects using everyday materials, including plywood, cardboard, resin, tape and paint. This approach is powered by what he calls ‘guilty consumerism’ and his bricolage recreations are a way of intimately engaging with the object: ‘As I create, I meditate on it and the lust of acquiring a product is replaced by the love of making it.’ The sculptures bear the traces of their fabrication, becoming vehicles for reflection on the creation of value and human labour.
Exhibited on bespoke pedestals referencing the art of Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957), these quotidian items are elevated to the position of high art. As Sachs explains, ‘the objects are selected and presented so that their shapes, along with their pedestals, engage the viewer in the tradition of modernist sculpture, at eye level on a plateau.’ He first encountered Brancusi’s sculptures during his student years at Bennington College, developing a personal relationship with his work beyond the confines of the classroom. One of Brancusi’s most groundbreaking innovations was to bring the sculpture up to head height; he ‘made the base as important as the sculpture itself, he made it another space to explore texture and colour and form’. This blurring of distinctions, which questions the parameters of sculpture, certainly informed Sachs’ own ambiguous relation to sculpture-as-object and object-as-sculpture.
Everything in this show has something that is formally prioritized, whether it’s a leaf blower, a surveillance camera, a milk crate or Kelly bag. Everything has form, but the objects are selected and presented so that their shapes along with their pedestals engage the viewer in the tradition of modernist sculpture, at eye level on a plateau. — Tom Sachs, 2021
