About Tom Sachs

Tom Sachs (born 1966 in New York City) is an American contemporary artist celebrated for his meticulously crafted sculptures, installations, and prints that interrogate consumer culture, branding, and the mythology of space exploration. Working with humble materials—plywood, resin, duct tape, and found objects—Sachs creates artworks that mimic luxury goods, corporate logos, and technological artifacts with obsessive attention to detail. His practice merges DIY aesthetics with conceptual rigor, creating sculptures that function as both critiques of and tributes to contemporary material culture.

Sachs's artworks are characterized by their handmade quality and their engagement with iconic brands and cultural symbols. His sculptures recreate everything from designer handbags and sneakers to NASA spacecraft and McDonald's franchises, all constructed with visible seams, exposed screws, and handwritten labels that celebrate the process of making. This approach challenges the fetishization of luxury goods and mass-produced objects, revealing the labor and artifice behind consumer desire. His Space Program series—including elaborate installations simulating NASA missions—represents some of his most ambitious artworks, merging performance, sculpture, and participatory experience.

Printmaking and edition-making are integral to Sachs's practice. His limited edition prints, photographs, and signed editions translate his investigations into branding, craftsmanship, and cultural mythology into highly collectible formats. These fine art prints capture the same attention to detail and conceptual depth as his larger sculptures, making his distinctive vision accessible to collectors worldwide. His prints are sought after for their ability to embody the same critique of consumer culture and celebration of handmade craft that defines his sculptural practice.

Throughout his career, Sachs has remained committed to exploring the relationship between art, labor, and consumer culture. His artworks continue to challenge viewers to reconsider their relationship with branded objects and technological progress, securing his position as one of the most important contemporary artists whose sculptures, installations, and prints redefine the boundaries between high art and material culture.

Notable exhibitions

Tom Sachs has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at leading institutions worldwide, including Space Program: Mars at the Park Avenue Armory in New York (2012), which featured an elaborate installation simulating a mission to Mars complete with sculptures, performance, and participatory elements. This landmark exhibition established his Space Program series as one of the most ambitious ongoing projects in contemporary art.

Additional major exhibitions include Space Program: Europa at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (2016), which later traveled to multiple venues, and Tea Ceremony at the Noguchi Museum in New York (2016), which explored Japanese ritual and craft traditions. His retrospective Boombox Retrospective 1999–2016 at the Brooklyn Museum (2016) presented a comprehensive survey of his sculptural works.

More recent presentations include Space Program: Rare Earths at Deitch Projects in New York (2024) and exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery locations worldwide. Sachs's artworks—including his highly collectible limited edition prints, photographs, and signed editions—are held in major international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

These exhibitions confirm Sachs's enduring influence as an artist who merges sculpture, performance, and participatory experience to create artworks that challenge consumer culture while celebrating the transformative power of handmade craft and collective ritual.