Thaddaeus Ropac London presents A Good Shelf, an exhibition and interactive installation by Tom Sachs that marries his signature bricolage sculpture techniques with the ceramic practice he began in 2012. A selection of thirty of the New York-based artist’s hand formed ceramics, displayed on singular shelves built from found materials, will be accompanied by Mezcaleria, a working coffee and mezcal bar, as Sachs continues to explore themes of ritual and process.

The ceramics on view can be used as mezcal copitas or cortado cups, cereal or soup bowls, but their ancient, versatile form originates from the East Asian tea bowl, or chawan. Sachs first started sculpting NASA-logo chawans after 2012’s Space Program: Mars mission when he created a bricolage version of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony to be conducted on Mars. Over the course of more than a decade, Sachs has continued and deepened his study of ceramics. His chawans are sculptures in their own right, and A Good Shelf is the first European exhibition dedicated to them.

Sachs is drawn to the Japanese tea ceremony for the same reason he is drawn to space travel–and the same reason people do anything at all–a desire for spirituality, sensuality and stuff. ‘Spirituality,’ Sachs says, ‘is about pursuing the big existential questions. Where do we come from? Are we alone? Sensuality is about going where no man has gone before: exploring space, the exhilaration of g-force, the awe of the cathedral, the feel of the kimono, the taste of matcha. Stuff is the hardware: a spaceship, a tea bowl, a chair. Our priority is sculpture. But sculpture doesn’t mean shit without that trinity and without its rituals.’ The tea bowl itself is emblematic of Sachs ongoing existential and material investigations.

With a small number of exceptions made in stoneware–a strong, vitrified ceramic that tends towards earthy tones of red and brown–Sachs mostly works in white English porcelain: its bright, industrial sheen making it the perfect blank slate. His hand-made sensibility, too, finds a corresponding expression in the medium: the artist explains that he uses porcelain ‘because it shows the fingerprints.’ Hand-shaped rather than wheel-thrown, each ceramic work betrays traces of its creation: puckered, pinched, pleasingly crooked. By the nature of the process, each vessel is one of a kind. They counter today’s world of flawless, soulless machine-made objects. Evidence of labor is

the point.

Sachs has a deep admiration for ceramicists’ ‘dedication to doing the same thing over and over again’, and he bases all of his ceramic cups and bowls on the same signature silhouette originated by the 16th century ceramicist Chōjirō. Though ceramic has long been considered a decorative or domestic art form, Sachs underpins his ceramic sculptures with the rigor and rules of Conceptual art, bringing to mind longtime influences like Sol LeWitt.

Each bowl or cup follows the same set of instructions. Sachs identifies repetition and adherence to a self-imposed set of rules as a way of ‘bringing you to another dimension’; of going deeper in the execution of an idea. These sculptures amplify Sachs’ studio practice of committing to the exploration of serialisation, repetition and progression. Sachs treats each bowl as a meditation on process itself, and as a unit in a larger ritual–stamped, serial numbered and catalogued–where the act of making is as meaningful as the object itself, and where the deeply personal act of repetition becomes conceptual.

Though Sachs is a prolific ceramicist– ‘one of my daily rituals is to make a new one every morning before I check my phone’, he says–most of his pieces never leave the studio. From among them, he selects a small number of what he calls ‘heroes’: chosen for a sense of perfection in their handmade imperfection. This could take the form of a visual balance between lip and foot; a well placed NASA logo; a nicely done crack repair in resin. With the culture that birthed the chawan in mind, these ‘hero’ bowls embody the concept in traditional Japanese aesthetics of wabi-sabi, where just the right amount of imperfection becomes the key to beauty. It is only the ‘heroes’ that appear in the exhibition, where they are each displayed on their own unique, hand-sculpted shelf. These shelves serve as pedestals, presenting Sachs’ humble-seeming, handmade cups and bowls in the same sculptural context as a Brancusi.

Each shelf is made from studio offcuts, or what Sachs calls ‘sacred scrap’. Most are constructed around the plywood and hardware combination that the artist has long been known for, and which has earned him a position at the forefront of contemporary sculpture. Some also include intact found objects: a mop, a used rag, a skateboard. Some of the shelves hold the vessels at their centres like jewels: protectively enclosed, often backed with mirrors that reflect them to the viewer. Other shelves lift their ceramic vessels high atop broom handles or poles, or, in one example, a set of wings, riffing on the visual codes of importance and value.

Throughout his career, Sachs has employed his characteristic bricolage approach to reverse the modernist drive towards ever-sleeker objects. In A Good Shelf, he brings his pragmatic tenderness towards scraps too good to be thrown away together with the meditative tactility of ceramics, treating them profoundly as equals. Governed by ritual, guided by the cerebral systems of Conceptual art and generated by our very human desire for the comforts of stuff , in this new body of work, Sachs once again finds a novel way to champion the aesthetics of imperfection, recycling and repair.

To premiere along with A Good Shelf, Sachs has built Mezcaleria, a working coffee and mezcal station, open to the public at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Art installation and bar, the sculpture expands upon the ideas of the exhibition, inviting visitors to consider and participate in the everyday rituals we all partake in. Mezcaleria will be activated on the opening night with the live bottling of a limited edition of 100 Coca-Cola bottles, each hand-customised by Sachs, in homage to Joseph Beuys.

A Good Shelf will be accompanied by a Tom Sachs Studio-produced publication documenting the works.