Tom Sachs "Furniture" Exhibition Walkthrough

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:04]Hi, I'm Tom Saxs and I'm here to take you through my furniture show at Salon 94 on East 89th Street. It's on view until June 20th. Let's go take a look.

[00:00:18]They made this in 2008 and it's a foam core model of a concrete lighting ballard at Unitade to Habitat in Marseilles. that Kerbuzzier made this to support the ground area, the ground garden around his post-war housing crisis solution. This is made out of bronze.

[00:00:40]We're going to take you through the show, but I thought first just show you one of the things that didn't make it into the exhibition. This is Pat Towers surfboard, and it's actually his mom's surfboard.

[00:00:52]Look at this beauty. Ridden this thing all over the world.

[00:00:57]Let's go straight to the back shell.

[00:01:01]When the Mars lander happens on Mars 2020 or Mars 2012, Curiosity and Perseverance is inside this back shell.

[00:01:11]The back shell protects and surrounds the Mars lander as it enters the thick Martian atmosphere. This bottom Kevlar heat shield protects it as it enters the atmosphere. This is part of the entry descent landing protocol. When I was artisan residence at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I worked with the EDL team and you'll see a painting upstairs we'll talk about in a few minutes. But I want you guys to know this is the actual size of the lander and it's also the exact size of my studio storefront. So when we do photography there, we made this tarp to block out all the light. But let me just take you through some of the objects in the show. This chest set is regulation size and height. It's all made of Conad wood. And these Donald Jud chairs have had lightning holes in them so that they're a little lighter.

[00:01:59]They're just as uncomfortable. But strangely, the thing that's cool about lightning holes, it's one of the few times when you remove material, it actually makes it stronger. That's a thing that comes from aerospace technology. Why does it make it stronger? Well, there's no real need for wood in this area. And as a result, the whole object's lighter, so you need lighter fasteners and less material to make the thing work. These cushions are sort of styled after Hermes cushions that have this really fine polished edge. And inside here is thin sheet of Nike Zoom X foam which is the best uh cushion absorbing per thickness material that I could find. So even though it's only half an inch thick is pretty comfortable. I mean it's a Jud chair so don't expect much.

[00:02:47]This tabletop's really cool. This is MDO. I highly recommend this material for any makers out here. It's resin impregnated paper adhered to plywood and this one has got a few layers of polyurethane coating on it and sanding.

[00:03:00]So, it's really nice, but I've left it out in in the rain for years and it lasts pretty well. It's not marine grade, but for the cost, it's it's pretty tough. You could experiment for yourself and see. No promises. This is a mining computer and this was used to mine Bitcoin. It's 5 years old. So the things have changed, but at the time that we made it, it got about 70 cents a day in Bitcoin, but it cost about three bucks a day in electricity to run. So we made these and put them in a few locations on other people's electricity to generate income. This shade is Kevlar.

[00:03:36]Same stuff as the heat shield um on the back shell.

[00:03:41]And what's great about the Kevlar is that it transforms the disgusting LED light into something warm. That's a technique that Naguchi pioneered when he saved the town of Akari from ruin when they made paper lanterns to go around candle light. What happened was people stopped buying these lanterns because electric light came in. So he had this very simple inventation of putting an electric light bulb into these Accari paper lanterns. The mulberry bark which looks like paper but it's really malberry bark transforms the electric light back into candle light. The same way we use Kevlar to transform LED light back into a warm rich rich light. This lamp over here is maybe even a better example. Table lamp with a porcelain pool chain surrounding this seating area. We call this the Odyssey chairs and club chairs.

[00:04:38]And this is, you know, a t kind of typical Chesterfield, but we have this really refined leather and also really kind of rugged plywood. So we can see how it's how it's all made. Plywood Barcelona table. This is the exact same size as M Vandro's Barcelona table, but done in thick plywood and tar bender top if you look really closely. Resin's poured over it and sanded. So you can still see the screws and the pencil marks. That's like an important part of the details of the making of everything in the show. This vase is made of porcelain slab built. So they're in ceramics. You either make things on the wheel or you pinch pot them or you do them with coil building or ropes like Joan pottery, the oldest physical made things besides cave paintings. Um or you make them out of slabs like flat sheets like a pizza of clay and then you pinch them together. So that's how this is made. But before we pinch them together, we smush the slabs into Nike waffle tread. And that's how you can see the traditional waffle. And the waffle is really important icon of Bolage because Bill Bowererman poured polyurethane into a waffle iron as a mold to make the sole of the shoe. And that was the origin of the Nike waffle tread. And what's really cool about that is these spikes, these little cleats that stick out deform upon impact. And because the rubber is a little hard, but you point load onto one little cleat at a time, it spreads out.

[00:06:07]So that way a harder rubber can be effectively softer and the load is spread. And that was kind of one of the great innovations of the time where that couldn't get rubber that was durable enough and soft enough so it used harder rubber but point loaded it so that the energy would disperse and that was a really just just the right balance of shock absorption. And a lot of that technology continues today. But all to say it's breage because it came from a waffle iron. Because I'm an intermediate ceramic maker, a lot of my things wind up destroyed in the kiln and crack. So, this exploded in the kiln and we resined it back together using these carbon fiber stitches and you'll see them all over this exhibition. And there's there's epoxy in here. This is waterproof. This is kind of a really difficult thing. This was made um here in New York City. It's out of glass.

[00:07:00]Made a foam core geodisic dome. Made a mold casted in glass. Bronze base stone wear with European gold luster pull chain.

[00:07:14]These aderondac chairs are made out of conad wood that was left out in the rain for a bunch of years. And these are modeled after Jared Reitfeld's crate chairs.

[00:07:28]This sofa is a model of the crate and barrel sofa that's been in my living room for a decade. When my wife and I were married, we couldn't really agree on a sofa. And she reminded me that Steve Jobs died without a sofa because he couldn't find just the right one. And she said, "That's not going to happen here. So, we're going to go buy a crate and barrel sofa today." And we've had that sofa for a dozen years. And, you know, it's disgusted and covered in baby puke and everything, but it's part of our family. Anyway, I remade this to the exact dimensions, but with null fabric, and I extended this just a little bit.

[00:07:59]It's really cozy. It's very difficult to make a sofa that's cozy and elegantl looking. And I think this is the magic hybrid. All it's missing is a giant TV with a Bergman movie so I can fall asleep. This is kind of a cool object. So, there two things. Is a little Lego lamp.

[00:08:19]Sorry to blind you. And this is a twochannel So all this does is play music.

[00:08:30]>> Nemo Lebreezy did this playlist. And if you don't like it, >> BC Sllays did this playlist. That other song is still playing in a different dimension. Just like the radio when you turn frequencies, many things are happening at once.

[00:08:47]>> It's got volume.

[00:08:50]I think I made this because there's so many choices. Like, how many times have you been in an intimate moment just waiting to get just the right song on and then the moment was lost because you were subject to the technology?

[00:09:00]Sometimes you can do more with less.

[00:09:02]That's what this is all about. This broom is made with Lego trees.

[00:09:10]Again, a lightning hole so you can hang it on the wall.

[00:09:16]This lamp is the base of RCS on a LM. In other words, the reaction control systems, the things that steer the spaceship come out of here. This is left over from our LM.

[00:09:30]Let's go and look at some things. Um, so you've all seen the coffee cart before and it continues in mecaleria.

[00:09:39]Extension cords. All the sculptures in the show, all the lamps have plugged in with extension cords. This is a This is a portrait of Beyonce done as an extension cord. She's 16 ft long and there's 0.30 ohms of resistance in this cord. That's what is measured by the length and the thickness of the wire and all the little brakes and soldered connections. She also works in Europe.

[00:10:05]Come and join us at the vending machine.

[00:10:08]We've got t-shirts and Z and toothbrushes and playing cards. New playing card hasn't been released yet, but you can secretly get it here. Nazis, letters that we haven't had in many, many years. And quarter screws. The candy is coming soon, too.

[00:10:22]We're on the second floor now, and this is a painting gallery. Kind of a mini retrospective of different things. This whiteboard discussions with Jet Propulsion Laboratory is an expression of a few months of conversations that I had when I was working with the guys who who developed the entry, descent, and landing protocol for Mars. And if you look up Tomaso Rivllini on the internet, you'll see that he holds the patent for the entry descent landing system and specifically the sky crane, which is how we got the rover onto the surface. Tomaso also gave me my first piece of Vectran which we used in the original Marsyard ones. He's kind of my muse for the Marsyard in the way that Tinker Hatfield, his muse was Michael Jordan. And they made all the Jordans together, or at least the first dozen of them or so. I made it so that Tomaso could work in the Mars yard in Pasadena, but also in the funding hallways of Washington DC NASA headquarters. I want a sneaker that could work in both. And these were all the conversations that we had over many, many months and even years. It continues a decade later. our you know our shared worship of Edward Tuy the importance of showing the labor the importance of having goals and the and and having and selection whether that's in your family or the kinds of things that you do with your time and even understanding some engineering stuff like constructive wave addition versus destructive wave negation and Adam Steltzner who is like you know the chief engineer at JPL right now says you know to use the central tragedy of your life used to fuel your gift and many existential conversations like that and you know where did we come from are we alone and our shared love of pyang this is a great maybe we take a good snapshot of this so people can read and and research there's some great secrets in there this painting is from 2005 how I draw Hello Kitty my way there's a San Rio way and then there's my way and this this is this is my Okay. I don't remember when when this one's from, but probably five years ago about there's another one downstairs we could tip and there's a whole series that I did of scotch tapes and TDK tapes. We could go over here plywood realtore.

[00:12:43]I never had a real toreal player, but when I was a little boy, my mom used to take me to Fioruchi where she'd buy bikinis and that's where I had my first cappuccino. and I threatened to get my ears pierced. Behind the checkout counter, they had a giant realto-re player blasting disco, these giant super long disco tracks, and it was like a club. Fioruchi was kind of a nightclub that you could go to during a day to buy stuff. And it was really influential.

[00:13:12]and the visual representation of sound and power with a real toreal live and display there. But you'd also you also see it in great movies like Apocalypse Now or the credit sequence of Mine Hunter.

[00:13:27]The symbol of the turning reels is an expression of information whether it's surveillance or imperialism or disco.

[00:13:37]Titus McBth did an amazing job with this with um Arduino controlling two separate motors, a fast one for the lead out reel and a slow one for the takeup reel. It's really precise, but it's all made out of plywood. These VU meters are made of paper clips and and plywood mop bucket from 1996.

[00:13:58]At the time, I did professional mopping and I really wanted a Rubbermaid mop ringer and bucket, but I couldn't afford one. had a like a knockoff. It was good enough and I was grateful to have a mop ringer and bucket at all because I had mopped plenty of floors just using my hands as ringers and that's the worst.

[00:14:16]But I was always kind of yearning for this Rubbermaid one. And even in bed when I'd flip through industrial supply cataloges, I'd always stop on that wanting that Rubbermaid. And I never quite got it because it seemed really indulgent to get rid of the one that I had just to get one that was only like a little bit better. But the form and shape of this, I think it has to do with the way the casters curve into the receiving sockets that then curves into the bucket itself is very specific. It's almost like an early Emmes base. And if we look downstairs at the gallerina desk, you'll kind of see that shape reflected again. And of course, Rubbermaid has such a great graphic design ability. And this is done by laying black duct tape and then yellow duct tape on top of it and then cutting it away with a scalpel to reveal the graphic beneath it.

[00:15:08]You can see Rubbermaid on this side, too. This is an original painting from 2020 they did with a print edition with Ed Hamilton press in Venice, California.

[00:15:19]I know it doesn't seem like a big deal and people might think I'm a pettant for insisting that the toilet paper be done in the proper overhand fashion, but it just looks better. And that way when you tear it off, you don't drag your knuckles against the wall. It's more friendly. It's presenting and saying, "Here, tear off a sheet." The little things matter.

[00:15:47]It's always wanted those fancy puva day beds, but they're so expensive, so I just made one out of plywood and leather. Since high school, I've made over 120 boom boxes. This is probably my third one as a professional. Right now, I'm at about 110 or something like that.

[00:16:04]And I made this for my show at Mary Boon Gallery. Recently, I came back to the studio and I ran renovated everything.

[00:16:11]It's got Bluetooth and um I even replaced the tweeters on these JBL speakers. So, these are not original, but they're better than original from Parts Express. Years before I met Michael and Charlie CS, I would go to Radio Shack and buy these COS headphones with titanium drivers and put them in these Pelter headsets. So, these are from Prot Titanium from 1993. And I even drilled little vents cuz they pump out so much energy. It's just so that air could come out. And they sound so good still. You block out all the air.

[00:16:41]They're fantastic. This is 1996.

[00:16:50]Landers. Each of these bowls was a little bit too heavy to support use in a tea ceremony. They're just a little too thick. So, I made them even heavier by adding landing gear. There's some really great details of how you can see epoxy holding on to the legs. Fishnet made out of carbon fiber. Fishnet made out of Kevlar. These are all different bowls done in different materials like mostly porcelain but porcelain fired with gas in and stain porcelain fired with gas, porcelain fired with electric. All different experiments. Some had some crazy issues with a glaze on the inside like that beautiful cow glazing. But these are all bowls that could have been smashed but I rehabilitated and and saved through um through lots of work.

[00:17:37]This one's called problems. These are bowls that are on their way to being restored, but I kind of gave up halfway.

[00:17:44]They've got little lead weights in them to prop it up. You can see the base is good and the rim is good and the NASA is good, but then we build around a restoration with with fiberglass and kevlar and carbon fiber. And you can see some of the repairs, but instead of going all the way towards a complete restoration stopped here and this is kind of like a what could have been.

[00:18:03]This one is a disastrous cabinet. Ones that were even worse, but some of them worked out. Maybe this is in here because it's a little too tippy or the glaze wasn't right. This little hero is called Grubby Hands. It's really only one in 50 bowls that survives firing, the engraving, the glazing, the restoration. And finally, at the end, if it's just the right weight and just the right feel, it gets a name. and grubby hands has something to do with this repair. This repair that was done in ceramic while it was wet is still alive and you can see it's so unbelievably thin that you can see the the light coming through the porcelain and it does hold water. So a hero has to hold water, be the right size and weight and evoke a certain feeling that makes it suitable to be called a hero, to be named, to put in a box and to be used in the ceremony.

[00:18:59]There are three reasons people do things. They do it for spirituality, sensuality and and for the stuff itself. You know, spirituality is climbing the highest mountain, going to another world, asking the big questions. Are we alone? Where do we come from? That's what religion and science do together. Or they're on parallel courses to answering those same questions. And then the sensuality is the thrill of climbing the highest mountain, the smell of the tatami, the feeling of awe that you get in a cathedral. And then the stuff is the cathedral itself, the spaceship or the tea bowl. Now I'm a stuff maker. But my making doesn't mean anything without the rituals like a tea ceremony or studying astrophysics to go to another world or the theological questions of, you know, are we alone? happens after our life.

[00:19:52]So, you kind of need all three, but people tend to specialize and I specialize in in stuff and that's why you'll see so many things here like I'm not a great DJ, but I make great boom boxes. I'm not a great tea ceremony master, but I make my tea bowls over and over again. And I it's important that you are involved and it's important that you know I do tea ceremony. I participated in as a guest or as a host and I do sometimes play music on my sound systems. This cabinet is called um issues and this is a place where we really went I think a little too far and they almost become decorative whereas the very first pieces of fiberglass are meant to hold it up towards a restoration. Here is where it just got wildly out of control. And I thought instead of throwing them out, we put it together in a display. And in the end, it becomes almost capricious some of the laminations of of carbon fiber with a Kevlar string on top and then lead in the back to hold it up, which we eventually remove. But here this it's like it's overkill. These are like many sculptures themselves. This is very this is the biggest most special one. Raw power. And this one's been restored with Japanese kugi um by Gens Trani who does two or three a year. He's a second generation Kugi master and my teacher. I did this in wet porcelain this repair, but he did this after. This is a very special one.

[00:21:15]These are little cups that are too small. Although some of them you could use for mecal copitas. Stuck them all in there over a dozen years. I've been making ceramics since 2012. It's now 2026. And these are just some of these things I've played with for many years and even some friends helped. Gray Seranti made that one that's used for one peanut M&M. Every morning before I look at my phone, I do output before input. I write in my journal where I touch clay. But it's important that I take a few moments before looking at my emails or talking to someone or listening to music or reading a book that I let my subconscious mind come through my body into my hands onto some material like paper or in this case porcelain. So every day I touch clay.

[00:22:03]When Sid Barrett died, they auctioned off his estate. One of the things that I didn't get in the auction was this desk.

[00:22:10]Barely stands on its own. So, I re I remade it in in bronze. It's pretty sturdy as a pedestal for this porcelain vase.

[00:22:23]I have the great honor of sharing this exhibition space with Shoko Suzuki, who is a ceramics master, who was born in Japan, but was unallowed to have her own kil. So, she moved to Brazil and had her career there. And these are the finest ceramics that humanity can produce. And they're on my table that's made in in plywood. We work with Stokes Manufacturing in North Carolina. This is walnut plywood. They're surrounded by a bunch of lamps and they all each have a story. This is Eene Gray lamp. Jeie always teases me. Oh, this is like such a piece of junk. It's just this fluorescent light bulb, but it's actually an incandescent light bulb. And when you try and find these, these are now $600 on eBay, but it has the warmest light and it's dimmable, incandescent still. This is us trying to make our own versions of things that I think Gray made. Just these simple totems. This is a cardboard tube homage and mad respect to David Hammond, someone who's exhibited in this room before.

[00:23:28]There's this David Hammond sculpture that I'm obsessed with, so I made my own. It's like a bike pump with a rubber chicken on it. chalk that goes on the wheels of the mouth of the chicken. So, you put that on your bike soon and you're standing there pumping this rubber chicken and it's never quite inflating. It's hilarious. There's a moment etched in my mind of Sam Rat Tannerat pipe pumping up her bike, not getting it to inflate and like laughing at her, her swearing, cursing me out.

[00:23:51]This this Lego pedestal was made by some senior designers and friends from Bund Denmark who work at Lego. In my studio for four days, we made this scale model of a Lego 2x4 brick, but it's got all the details of it. So, we started by measuring the thickness of the walls of the plastic and then scaled our drawing up to be one inch thick to scale. So, it's exactly the same thickness. And all eight studs are represented, including the one deformed stud. I don't know if you're aware of it, but every 2x4 brick element in LEGO has one deformed stud where the injection molding happens. And if you come around the back, you'll see that thickness happening and the tubes and the structure ridges.

[00:24:36]It's all exactly the scale. I made this for my son guy and I asked him if I could show in the exhibition and he said, "You can show it, but it's you can't sell it."

[00:24:47]So, this is the malberry bark that I was talking about. that looks like paper and it transforms electric light back into candle light.

[00:24:57]This is something maybe I'm most proud of in the show. This is just a plywood lamp. It's really hard to make something that's really simple. Having something that's so reduced that it is almost like nature that it just exists. You don't even see it. That's always something to aspire to in design. And I think some of these lamp ideas are are fun and frivolous, but the simplicity of this is something that I'm always aspiring to.

[00:25:20]This is another lamp that I'm kind of obsessed with. Stone wear with European gold luster on the inside and bamboo. Still a little fancy. I want to make this even simpler. The simplicity of this battery powered lamp.

[00:25:36]Again, it's just Makita and some Lego parts, but it's all it needs. And this runs for 4 days. These are the the shop chairs. And let's just start with a history of it. It starts with this elaborately made X chair. And this is polycarbonate which doesn't yellow or crack, but it's very soft. So, it's prone to scratching.

[00:25:56]I did this whole pattern so that the scratches kind of get obscured and blended in. It's won't be so unsightly as it's scratched and worn. And then the lightning holes happen to reduce weight and increase strength. But it really got expensive if you can imagine to to form this it has to be in a kiln overnight and all these holes are are done by hand in advance of the forming. It's very temperamental and fragile and all of these holes in the wood have to be sanded on the inside. So I worked with Bryce Williamson at Stokes to develop a best practices version. The same chair but was more accessible. And so for about tenth the cost because we reduced the holes by about tenth. We were able to make it out of plywood and all these colors.

[00:26:49]This is the prototype with the arm. And we we made the arms in stainless steel, but this is sort of us figuring it all out. You can see all the cracks and problems in this one. But this is kind of the final prototype before we went into production. So these chairs in this set are kind of based on Schindler armrests are done in shoe soul rubber vibram shoe soles and this is a reitfelt crate table done in aderondac scale.

[00:27:19]These are all pieces of furniture from my house. You should see my house right now. It's empty because everything's in this show. But I wanted to see how these things really work in real life and how we can live with them. It's important these things we make have utility. The worst ceramics are the ones that are in the back of the shelf that you don't use. The best ones that are are the ones that have little chips in the corner because you used and love them so much.

[00:27:45]If you want to learn more about this, get the Tom Saxs furniture catalog resume on my web store. The show is on view at Salon 94 in New York, 3 East 89th Street until June 20th, 2026.