2004, "Tom Sachs," for Terminal 5, Sternberg Press


Today it seems almost impossible to access the optimism of air flight. Flight originally represented the unlimited potential of modern technology. Airplanes collapsed the time to any destination. Travel posters invited the mid-century jet set to weekends in Brazil, Lisbon, New York, London, Los Angeles - offering to take them anywhere and eventually to outer space. On September 12, 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University declaring, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade...to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

But at that historical moment, factories brought the same things everywhere. We could go anywhere but anywhere was becoming everywhere. Modernism extended our reach but also offered a mechanization that now reigns, even over air travel.The work of Tom Sachs consists of hand made assemblages. The artist is engaged in a construction of pre-determined forms that re-present the bricolage of modernity. His space shuttle and McDonald's sign are American icons, trophies of 20th Century progress. They also work in dialogue with Saarinen's terminal, a space age monument that extended modernity to the masses.