Tom Sachs

Tom Sachs is a sculptor who lives and works in New York. He studied at the Architectural Association in London, took a BA at Bennington College in 1989, and spent two years as a fabricator in Frank Gehry's furniture shop in Los Angeles. His sculptures rebuild familiar objects by hand from foamcore and other plain materials, and they often set luxury brands against fast food or violence, as in Tiffany Value Meal and Chanel Guillotine. In 1994 he made a Hello Kitty Nativity for a Barneys New York Christmas window.

Since 2007 his Space Program has restaged space missions as installations, starting at Gagosian in Beverly Hills with a full-scale lunar module, a mission control and handmade suits. Later missions went to Mars at the Park Avenue Armory in 2012, to Europa at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2016, and on to Deichtorhallen Hamburg and Seoul. The Guggenheim, the Whitney, SFMOMA, LACMA and the Centre Pompidou hold his work. He has also designed shoes with Nike, starting with the Mars Yard in 2012.

Rocket Factory launched in August 2021. Collectors buy nose cone, body and tail NFTs, then burn the three parts to mint a finished rocket, up to 1,000 in all. When an owner chooses to launch, the studio builds a physical copy of the rocket and flies it, and recovered parts go back to the owner in a display box with a video of the launch. In 2022 Tiffany & Co. bought the rocket Okapi and announced a partnership with Sachs. That year Rocket Factory won a Wallpaper* Design Award, and Christie's sold Relentlessness, a rocket with its physical sculpture, to benefit MAPS.