NASA is the best funded craft industry in our solar system. Command Service Module Lamp combines the work of two artists (Noguchi and Sachs) for whom cottage-industrial design, seat-of-the-pants engineering, and the co-option of mass producing systems for artmaking are important techniques. Sachs’ incorporation of Noguchi’s Akari 1N--the most succinct statement of Noguchi’s aspirations for light sculpture: biomorphic, asymmetric, freeform--suggests one possible future path for the development of spacecraft. Akari, not coincidentally, already share a lot in common structurally with aerospace engineering: lightweight skins stretched over strong, resilient lightweight frames. By focusing on the natural synchronicity between handicraft and technology in their work (his own, Noguchi’s, and NASA’s), Sachs pushes the 1N’s formal resemblance to an Apollo-era lunar lander beyond merely skin deep.

Tom Sachs / Isamu Noguchi
Command Service Module Lamp, 2016/1968
Ink on Akari 1N (paper, bamboo, metal, and electrical components)
15 3/8 x 9 13/16 in.
Produced by Tom Sachs Studio in collaboration with the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum
Edition of 100