In an attempt to represent the devastating power of mass commercialisation and, together, the resistance and transgression that we can oppose it with, the New York artist – who in 1998 caused no small debate with his “Prada death camp”, a Nazi concentration camp mounted on a Prada hat box – has set up in Berlin a universe dominated by an alternative economy: where unlicenced McDonald’s and chairs called Barcelona rule. An invitation to reconsider the confines – economic and geographic, architectural and ideological – with an unblinkered look at the socio-political structures that they impose.
The installation, his first in Europe, fresh from a New York exhibition at the Bohen Foundation, covers 400 square metres with a long and tortuous track for model electric cars that winds around the sculptures, mechanical games and videos. And whilst the visitors move around, a closed circuit TV records their every move.
How did we end up seems to be the question that Sachs poses, not without irony, from the hopes of the International Style to the mass commerciality of such a globalised world.
until 5.10.2003
Nutsy’s
Deutsche Guggenheim
Unter den Linden 13-15, Berlin
T +49-30-202093-0
http://www.deutsche-guggenheim.de
http://www.tomsachs.org
