San Francisco
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
In the world of art-speak, some words are used to the point of nonsense – “liminal” was one, not so long ago – while others, though perennially revived, manage to retain some kind of meaning. “Bricolage,” as used by Tom Sachs to describe his method of working, seems to fall into this latter category. Virtually all of the objects in his sprawling recent exhibition (Sachs is the only artist ever to have filled YBCA’s cavernous first-floor galleries with a solo show) were united by their method of manufacture and the philosophy behind it: the bricoleur’s practice of cobbling something together out of a diverse assortment of available materials. Sachs enlarges this definition, describing the process employed by himself and his staff of 12 as re-tooling and re-signifying materials at hand into something new, novel, and – above all – playful. …see the entire review in the print version of March’s Sculpture magazine.
