Artists

Tom Sachs

Press release

Thaddaeus Ropac London presents A Good Shelf, an exhibition and interactive installation by Tom Sachs that marries his signature bricolage sculpture techniques with the ceramic practice he began in 2012. A selection of 30 of the New York-based artist’s hand-formed ceramics, displayed on singular shelves built from found materials, will be accompanied by Mezcaleria, a working coffee and mezcal bar, as Sachs continues to explore themes of ritual and process.

The ceramics on view can be used as mezcal copitas or cortado cups, cereal or soup bowls, but their ancient, versatile form originates from the East Asian tea bowl, or chawan. Sachs first started sculpting NASA-logo chawans after his 2012 Space Program: Mars mission, when he created a bricolage version of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony to be conducted on Mars. Over the course of more than a decade, Sachs has continued and deepened his study of ceramics. His chawans are sculptures in their own right, and A Good Shelf is the first European exhibition dedicated to them.