New York, NY (October 7, 2024) – Acquavella Galleries is pleased to present our fifth solo exhibition with Tom Sachs. Titled Bronze, the exhibition features new and recent bronze sculptures by the artist and will be on view at our New York gallery from November 7—December 13, 2024.

In this exhibition, Sachs continues his formal investigation and exploration of the modernist canon. Guided by the iconoclastic spirit and wit of Marcel Duchamp’s iconic “readymades,” Sachs employs his signature bricolage technique to reimagine sculptures by Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. Drawing on an interplay between technical production and quotidian materials, these sculptures question traditional conceptions of what constitutes a work of art. Previous bodies of work have also engaged the annals of modernism, including Sachs’s take on Piet Mondrian’s abstractions in the 1990s, recreated out of duct tape and plywood; foamcore interpretations of Le Corbusier's housing complexes in the aughts; and, more recently, the reimagining of Picasso’s paintings, particularly from the so-called “war years” period between 1937 and 1945.

Bronze features twelve sculptures, each constructed from a bricolage of found, everyday objects, which have been cast in bronze and painted with enamel. Drawing from Picasso’s sculpted oeuvre, Sachs’s new works are in dialogue with sculptures the Spanish artist created from the 1930s through the early 1950s, many of which were also assemblage sculptures constructed out of found materials.

Sachs’s practice of handcraft and DIY engineering both channels and reimagines Picasso’s objects through his own distinct visual language. Studying Picasso’s use of assemblage, Sachs also investigates the connection between the Spanish master and Duchamp; for Sachs, the two artists represent “the two great titans” of modern art: “It’s raw Dionysian spirit versus Apollonian intellectualism. It’s painting with a capital P and non-retinal conceptual art.” Sachs’s resulting works represent a multilayered transformation—catapulting these iconic modernist works and conversations into the contemporary world, recontextualizing them, and reaffirming their cultural relevance.

A reconstruction of a haunting 1941 sculpture by Picasso, in Death’s Head, Sachs used a chainsaw to carve a found piece of wood into a roughly hewn, evocative image of a skull. Picasso created the original Death’s Head during the Occupation of Paris during World War II, when the Nazi regime had strict criteria for what constituted “moral” forms of art. While they championed classical examples of Western art, modernists like Picasso were deemed “degenerate.” It was during this time that Picasso made the bold choice to cast Death’s Head in bronze, which was strictly forbidden as all metal was reallocated towards the Nazi war effort. By defiantly disregarding this decree, Picasso gave his work a chance at permanence.

By casting his own bricolage assemblages of found materials into bronze, Sachs explores this process of transmutation that happens through the casting process, transforming everyday objects into bronze. In so doing, he probes the definitions of art and explores the dialogues set forth by modernism—the distinction between conceptual art and “retinal” art, and the boundaries between “high” and “low,” the sublimated and the everyday.

Tom Sachs (b.1966, New York)

Sachs’s genre-defying mixed media sculptures, often recreations of modern icons using everyday materials, show all of the work that goes into producing an object—a reversal of modernization’s trend towards products with cleaner, simpler, and more perfect edges. Sachs’s work is conspicuously handmade, lovingly cobbled together from plywood, resin, steel, ceramic and found objects. The scars and imperfections in the sculptures tell the story of how they came into being and remove them from the realm of miraculous conception.

For over 35 years, Sachs has continued to lead his studio team in creating breakthrough artworks beyond sculpture—including paintings, movies, performance art, and industrial design.

Sachs’s work has been included in many exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad and is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo. Major solo exhibitions have been on view at Art Sonje Center (2022); Hybe Insight (2022); Deichtorhallen Hall for Contemporary Art (2021); Schauwerk Sindelfingen (2020); Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2019); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2017); Nasher Sculpture Center (2017); Sogetsu Kaikan (2016); the Brooklyn Museum (2016); the Noguchi Museum (2016); The Contemporary Austin (2015); the Park Avenue Armory (2012); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2009); the Fondazione Prada, Milan (2006); the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2003); and at SITE SANTA FE (1999).

Sachs lives and works in New York.