Shelf Life : Tom Sachs Nutsy's
In the Shelf Life series, I want to introduce you to various books from my personal art book collection. May it be recent additions, more obscure rarities and finds, or timeless classics with decades of shelf life in the literal sense of the word.
What we have here, is the catalog for Tom Sachs‘ exhibition at Berlin’s - now-defunct - Deutsche Guggenheim in 2003. The 400 square meter exhibition was the artist’s first solo museum show in Europe and before being installed in the German capital it was first shown in New York since it was a commission by the Bohen Foundation. As a master at building “imagined realities” Sachs has mapped out a tea ceremony practice and even has launched his own „space program“ by now. But before all that, he built his personal amusement park called Nutsy’s - the Tom Sachs equivalent to Disney Land in his characteristic DIY style.
“In his postmodern bricolage, Sachs interrogates fundamental issues of modernity: production, consumption, and circulation. Nutsy’s, with all of its architectural and historical quotation, is nonetheless of its time, rife with product placement, depicting our contemporary landscape. Nutsy’s invites us to rethink borders - whether economically or geographically, architecturally or ideologically constructed - to see the sociopolitical structures that define, fence in, demarcate, and encourage us to activate and open up the built environment to reversals of meanings.“”
The exhibition combines sculpture, audiovisual installations, and interactive as well as performative elements. Sachs builds, recontextualizes, and comments with an accurate sense of humor as well as a unique approach to curation and combining different cultural spheres. He puts the US presidential emblem on a DJ booth as well as a rolling mini-fridge station full to the brim with booze and shows 1:25 scale reproductions of Le Corbusier buildings next to a to-scale Mc Donald’s model. The fast-food giant (Sachs’ version) is also providing the catering for Nutsy’s via a Mini Booth. Of course, with a self-made shotgun built in - just in case someone wants to rob your bricolage fast food joint. Among others, there is also the Toyans sound System Wall - which is essentially a 10,000-watt boom box and probably my favorite piece from the exhibit, a track for little Mini-Z remote race cars including time leaderboards, and a surveillance station with monitors that show the feeds of numerous cameras that are more or less hidden throughout the exhibition space.
The catalog gives detailed insights into every single one of the stations (or “attractions”) that comprise the Nutsy’s course. Thorough descriptions; sketches, material and size specifications - everything is there. It is worth exploring all the blueprints, notes, and little collages that come in the book. You could probably rebuild some of the stations yourself with all that information. There is a lot to discover. For example, I found a note by Sachs regarding the Barcelona Pavillon installation and its Mies van der Rohe furniture which made me wonder if it was meant as a diss to the Bauhaus movement or critique of its commercialization and cannibalization? But maybe it was just Sachs’ way of giving props and paying homage. Or he was just exploring his shrewd sense of irony and was having a lot of fun. Not too far fetched for a guy that built his own amusement park as an art installation. But then again - if it’s not fun, why do it?
Thumbnail picture:
Installation view, Tom Sachs, Nutsy’s, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany, 2003. Photo by Tom Powel Imaging Inc.
Source: Vito Schnabel
