Tom Sachs - Space Program

For over a decade, Sachs has pondered the technical ingenuity and romance with the unknown that brought America the Apollo program. This publication documents the culmination of his research: the realization of his own life-size Space Program, comprised of three main sculptural elements (Lunar Module, Mission Control, and Space Suit) and a Flight Plan, all put to use during a live demonstration of a lunar landing. In his exuberant manufacture of objects and scenarios, Sachs asks barbed questions of modern creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation. Space Program features 797 full-color and 30 black-and-white images; a conversation among Buzz Aldrin, Tom Sachs, and Louise Neri; a critical essay by Arthur C. Danto, contextualizing this work among the artist’s contemporaries; and a comprehensive discussion of the work by Mark Van de Walle. These are accompanied by appendices that provide a full visual and descriptive account of the innumerable components that make up Sachs’s work and illustrate the artist’s related drawings and source materials.