Tom Sachs: Nutsy's

by Glenn O'Brien, Maria-Christina Villasenor, Tom Sachs

Using foam core, hot glue, plywood, steel, scavenged street lumber, asphalt, a radar gun, liquor, turntables and LPs, Tom Sachs has built a 4,000-square-foot installation that links the idealistic modernism of Le Corbusier with the commercialized modernism of McDonald's. Remote-control cars and their racetrack form the connective tissue that binds the disparate parts of Nutsy's together, from the ghetto and Modernist art park to the bong-hit station and piss station. Representing the culmination of Tom Sachs's studio activity over the past two years, Nutsy's was originally inspired by Le Corbusier's 1952 Unit d'Habitation housing block--a massive 12-story structure which has come to symbolize both the integrity of modernism as well as its subsequent corruption. In thinking about modernism's ideals, Sachs--ever the bricoleur--was driven to explore its other side. Modernism and bricolage act as a kind of foil for each other in Nutsy's , with the resourcefulness of bricolage standing in contrast to the grandiosity of Modernism.

Paperback

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Glenn O'Brien was an American writer who focused largely on the subjects of art, music and fashion. He was featured for many years as "The Style Guy" in GQ magazine, and published a book with that title.