By Tom Sachs
Located in Madrid, Madrid
Tom Sachs - TOO DARN HOT
Date of creation: 2022
Medium: Screen print on Somerset paper
Edition: 1337
Size: 77.5 x 60.9 cm
Condition: New in mint conditions, never framed
This is a 13 color screen print with a semi-gloss varnish on heavy weight 600gsm Somerset Tub Sized Satin paper. Numbered of a limited edition of 1337 copies.
Each print on this edition includes a group of mechanisms conceived by the artist to guarantee its authenticity, and as integral parts of the artwork. A debossed design includes information from the launch of Sachs' physical Too Darn Hot rocket at LACMA in 2021. A rubber stamp in its centre denotes the prints' specific number within the overall edition. There's also a QR code printed in UV ink that connects each print with the original Too Darn Hot NFT metadata on the blockchain. On the print’s reverse is a tamper-proof holographic sticker, placed alongside a QR code sticker that links to a unique token an NFT which serves as a certificate of authenticity for the print it connects with.
This work is the first limited screen printed edition based on his Rocket Factory project, a digital platform that allows users to build, buy and sell virtual rocket components each featuring branding from different companies. Too Darn Hot is a so-called Frankenrocket. A Frankenrocket is a rocket made up of three different branded components rather than a “Perfect Rocket”, which is made up of pieces featuring the same brand.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Tom Sachs was born in New York in 1966 and grew up in Westport, Connecticut. After graduating and earning his BA from Bennington College in Vermont, he studied architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He returned to the United States and spent two years working at Frank Gehry's furniture store in Los Angeles, where he began using the term knolling*. Tom Sachs currently lives and works in New York. Throughout the 1990s, Sachs developed a technique based on do-it-yourself, a kind of mantra toward "do-it-yourself" that he deployed in both video and sculpture.
Sachs' work, which defies artistic genres, recreates modern icons using everyday materials that show all the labor involved in producing an object. His work bucks the trend of modernization which creates products with cleaner, simpler and more perfect edges. Sachs' pieces are painstakingly handmade, using a variety of materials such as foam board, plywood, resin, steel and ceramics. The imperfections of his sculptures and paintings tell their story, taking them away from the realm of miraculous conception and narrating the laborious manual process involved in their creation. All the steps leading to the final result are always on view. This means that all the joints, seams, screws or any other elements that hold materials together, such as foam board and plywood, are exposed. Nothing is blurred, matted or disguised.
Hello Kitty Nativity Scene (1994) is a traditional representation of the Christian Nativity with modern animated and world-famous characters such as Hello Kitty and three Bart Simpson replacing the religious figures. This work, along with others such as Prada Toilet (1997) and White Ghetto Blaster (2000), represent Sachs' critical yet comical approach to the creation of objects and their consumption.
Nutsy's (2002), a model made only with sheets of foam board and a glue gun, recreates an imaginary 1:25 scale city with a ghetto and a modernist art park that includes sculptural, mechanical and video elements and even a McDonalds. Nutsy's most spectacular piece is the recreation of Le Corbusier's 1952 Unitè d'Habitation housing block. This urban complex is intended to be an amalgam of modernist utopianism and capitalist modernism.
For his 2008 exhibition at the Lever House in New York, Sachs installed his first monumental sculptures. To construct the oversized brand icons of Hello Kitty and My Melody, the artist turned to the traditional medium of bronze, which he then covered with white paint to mimic his favorite material, foam board.
Other projects have included his versions of various Cold War masterpieces, such as the Apollo 11 lunar excursion module and the bridge of the battleship USS Enterprise...
Category
2010s Conceptual Tom Sachs Art
MaterialsSatin Paper, Screen