TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Steve Lacy: OK I’ve heard of Speakeasy bars. They were the huge thing a few years ago there everywhere now. But what about a Speakeasy art studio?

00:00:06 Kimberly Guilfoyle: Yeah, Simone Boyce here now to show us the secret location and how we can all get inside.

00:00:10 Simone Boyce: Yes. Probably the only way you’d ever hear bout this is what the hashtag bodega, 245 on Instagram or by word of mouth and this artist has been in this space for 20 years. But he found a way to connect his art to the street. Top Rahman. Marshmallow Fluff. Swiss passports?

00:00:30 Simone Boyce: Can I have a passport?

00:00:32 Simone Boyce: Bodega 245 is your average New York Corner store. Until it isn’t.

00:00:38 Tom Sachs: The Bodega is a store front of my studio. We sell candy bars and coffee and Lucy cigarettes and Swiss passports.

00:00:46 Simone Boyce: That’s the shop owner. Renowned sculptor Tom Sachs.

00:00:50 Tom Sachs: Although I’ve loved my sculpture and I love the complex art of our time. It has an elitist side that’s a little alienating, so I want to take some of the ideas that are important to me about analog things that are made by hand instead of by computer and make them accessible to everyone.

00:01:08 Simone Boyce: The passports. A clever liquor license work around. The bodega, art itself.

00:01:15 Tom Sachs: You don’t need a piece of paper on a wall explaining to you that this is art.

00:01:19 Simone Boyce: Sachs forever the irreverent champion of messy man made stuff in a mass produced age and this is his laboratory.

00:01:27 Tom Sachs: Simone, welcome to my materials library.

00:01:30 Tom Sachs: Every kind of tape, including Esotapica, industrial supplies, clamps and brackets and lighting, section, electronics and the wonderful world of color.

00:01:39 Simone Boyce: In 2012, the NASA Fanboy built a full scale mission to Mars entirely from household objects. Spacesuits. Rovers. The whole deal. This is his latest invention, a bricolage toaster.

00:01:50 Tom Sachs: You put the bread in here and then you lower it down. You can see it actually works. Look toast.

00:02:03 Simone Boyce: In Tom’s world, every handmade masterpiece is a reminder of our potential.

00:02:08 Tom Sachs: Individual has great power, especially in this time of realization that we have through computers. That our individual fingerprint in our handwriting and our individual voice is the music of our time and that anyone can do it.

00:02:23 Simone Boyce: Tom’s latest exhibition is currently on view at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, and he’s also opening this amazing boombox retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum next month. You can keep up with all these projects at tomsachs.org and on Instagram at Tom Sachs.

00:02:37 Steve Lacy: So cool.

00:02:38 Simone Boyce: I know it’s a little bit confusing so the bodega is a place where people can come. You can actually buy stuff, but then we got invited because, you know, we like to give you guys access to Fox 5. He gave us a tour of his private studio and this is where he builds all of these sculptures.

00:02:52 Steve Lacy: In Soho, yes, I can’t think of a better life than going to your studio in Soho and making all this wacky stuff.

00:02:57 Simone Boyce: He made a toaster.

00:03:00 Kimberly Guilfoyle: He made all this out of nothing right out of just random. Well, that’s that’s. Talent.

00:03:04 Simone Boyce: It is. It’s almost engineering in a way and that’s what he loves about it. He loves creating function and adding value to these. Really handmade objects.

00:03:12 Steve Lacy: MacGyver Esque.

00:03:13 Simone Boyce: Yes exactly.

00:03:14 Steve Lacy: Very good. Cool, I love it. Thanks Simone.