Tom Sachs’s Nuggets series highlights the everyday strangeness of modern industrial design – products consumers use without the slightest idea as to how they were made. Consisting of a boombox, a Barbie doll and a cinderblock, among other things, Sachs’s Nuggets are emphatically imperfect. These often functional objects – cobbled together from wood, epoxy, ceramic and sometimes electrical components – show the evidence of their making: glue drips, pencil marks and other scars. By calling attention to the works’ handmade qualities, Sachs hopes to reverse the relentless modernist drive towards pure form and clean lines, and remove these objects from the realm of miraculous conception. These Nuggets reflect the importance Sachs places on discipline and experimentation within the studio, as well as his conviction that work is its own reward.
