By Stewart Oksenhorn
December 31, 2004
For a 14-year-old with certain
habits and tastes, stepping into Tom Sachs' "The Delinquency
Chamber" is akin to walking through the gates of heaven.
Inside the chamber - equipped with a door and lock, to keep
out snooping parents - is a full-size refrigerator stocked
with Budweiser and vodka, a bong with lighter and, most prominent,
a large-screen video display hooked up to the ultraviolent,
supersuccessful video game "Grand Theft Auto."
"This is a delinquent experience,"
said Sachs, whose "Delinquency Chamber" is part
of the exhibit "Dedicated to the Memory of Joe Ben Plummer
1968-2004," showing at the Baldwin Gallery. "It's
smoking pot and drinking beer and playing this basically delinquent
game. These all can be delinquent experiences."
But Sachs is no delinquent, or
at least not the juvenile variety. The Connecticut-born, New
York-based - artist? tinkerer? corrupter? - is a ripe 38.
And Sachs has added touches to the chamber that most teenagers
would have overlooked: ashtray, fire extinguisher, waste receptacle
and even a vacuum to eliminate smoke. To its creator, "The
Delinquency Chamber" takes youthful pleasures into the
adult sphere.
“Part of what I do is accelerate
the indulgence of adolescence to a profession,” says
Tom Sachs, standing in front of his giant “Toyans Jr.”
boombox. His exhibit, “Dedicated to the Memory of Joe
Ben Plummer 1968-2004,” is now at the Baldwin Gallery
along with Jennifer Bartlett, “October, Amagansett:
New Pastels”; and Timothy Cahill: “New Work.”
"I'm interested in enhancing
that delinquent part of the experience," said Sachs.
"Part of what I do is accelerate the indulgence of adolescence
to a profession."
Sachs can certainly indulge. Interviewing
him inside the chamber, which seemed at first a great idea
- there's plenty of room for two inside - turns out to be
a different experience than the typical question-and-answer
session. I ask Sachs about the underpinnings of his work,
notions of violence, decadence, humor. And he responds by
getting deep into the intricacies of "Grand Theft Auto,"
a bloody and profane urban shoot-'em-up featuring a man battling
cops and gangs.
Between gang confrontations and
police standoffs, Sachs points out the details that separate
"The Delinquency Chamber" from a video arcade experience.
There's the $1,000 worth of fine felt that lines the inside
walls. The ordinary-looking trash hole is lined on the inside
with a resin that ensures a fresh-smelling chamber experience.
Sachs could have just cut a hole in the refrigerator door
to snake some wires through - but that would have caused cold
air to seep out. So Sachs went to lengths to make a plug to
minimize the leakage.
Elsewhere in the exhibit are structures
of a similar scale that demonstrate Sachs' desire to take
indulgence to a professional extreme. "Toyans Jr."
is a boombox that you'll never see hoisted up to someone's
ear. The music system is some 6 feet tall and 8 feet wide,
and its potential for volume, with 7,000 watts, is frightening.
"Ice Boat" is a full-size vessel, built for ice
sailing, that Sachs would like to try out on some local frozen
surface.
“The thing that’s most
interesting to me isn’t all this political stuff, about
adolescence and consumerism. What I’m interested in
is bricolage, building stuff,” says Tom Sachs, whose
work is on display at Baldwin Gallery.
Poke around and play with Sachs'
adult toys, and conceptual issues emerge. For one, there is
the idea of violence, in the use of "Grand Theft Auto"
and the several functioning shotgun pieces in the exhibit.
Much of that has to do with the titular Ben Plummer, the friend
and fellow artist who taught Sachs the technique of wood-burning,
known as pyrography.
"All this work is kind of
destructive - the black asphalt painting ["4:3,"
which describes the work's dimensional ratio], the guns,"
said Sachs, a graduate of Vermont's Bennington College. "It's
all about rage and heartbreak this past year. Losing Ben sucks;
losing someone else, too."
Counterbalancing the destructive
forces is the crudely rendered "Scotch Tape," a
straightforward painting of the familiar Scotch tape label.
"The Scotch tape represents mending," said Sachs.
"Everything else is black-and-white, or devoid of color.
And the Scotch tape is a foundation of bricolage. It's also
the foundation of repair."
Sachs' work seems designed to make
people question the nature of art. Sachs might even deny that
what he makes is art; the word never even comes up in our
conversation. But he does find "Grand Theft Auto"
- designed by some of his West Village neighbors - to be not
just a piece of art, but "the work of art of our time.
"I think it's crazy people
have an Andreas Gursky, but not a $50 copy of 'Grand Theft
Auto,'" he says. "For better or worse, it represents
where we're at, in a lot of ways. It represents, culturally,
where art is at from a popular perspective. It's a game about
carjacking."
For all its violence and high concepts,
Sachs doesn't overlook the humor factor in his work. Both
"Toyans Jr." and "The Delinquency Chamber"
come equipped with heavy-duty axes - "in case you need
to get out," he says in the case of "The Delinquency
Chamber" - with the wood-burnt inscription, "Jack
Torrance Pro Model," in reference to Jack Nicholson's
ax-wielding character in "The Shining."
Finally, there is Sachs' apparent
interest in the juxtaposition of hi-tech and retro technique.
Alongside his irony-free admiration for the digital detail
of "Grand Theft Auto," all of Sachs' pieces possess
an old-school feel and look.
"Toyans Jr." is primarily
rigged up to play cassette tapes (though there is a CD player
hiddenin back). Sachs' music of choice is vintage Jamaican
ska, by the likes of the Heptones, where you can hear the
tape hiss and pop. "The Delinquency Chamber" features
a black plastic ashtray that might have come from a time capsule.
One of the smaller, and odder, pieces consists primarily of
an ancient McDonald's french fry scoop.
This retro quality is tied to what
Sachs finds most significant in his work. Beyond any commentary
- on the nature of contemporary art, or our violent society,
or his own loss-filled year - Sachs says he is most interested
in the problem-solving aspect of building things. For instance,
how to affix a bong to a door so the water won't spill. These
are the issues that Sachs wrestles with more than, say, the
sociopolitical implications of "Grand Theft Auto"
being the biggest-selling video game ever.
"The thing that's most interesting
to me isn't all this political stuff, about adolescence and
consumerism," said Sachs, who spent a yearlong apprenticeship
with a carpenter sanding one 2-inch strip of wood. "What
I'm interested in is bricolage, building stuff.
"We live in a time where"
- and he picks up the remote control for "Grand Theft
Auto" - "we have no knowledge of how these things
are put together. It's just plastic and screws and metal."
Sachs sees his assemblages, where
the bolts and wires are in plain view, as a rebellion against
the current mystery that surrounds our gizmos. "The Delinquency
Chamber" carries a price tag of $225,000, but someone
with just a modest amount of know-how could duplicate it for
a fraction of that.
"There's something almost
anachronistic, almost Luddite about the work," said Sachs.
"I have a disdain for nonuser interface panels, that
the consumer is not supposed to touch. Everything I make is
consumer-serviceable. An intelligent person could do it, someone
who's not afraid."
Sachs concludes that, in the music
world, he admires Lee "Scratch" Perry. It is fitting:
Perry is known for making the "dub" style of reggae,
a production-heavy sound that mixes different bits of music
and is the forerunner of modern hip-hop. But the aged Perry's
music would now be considered archaic, far from the slick,
smooth sounds currently favored.
"You can hear what he's doing,"
said Sachs. "I like things that show their seams."
Stewart Oksenhorn's e-mail
address is stewart@aspentimes.com
