Rolf Sachs - Biography

Since Bauhaus, the formula is known to everyone: form follows function. Entire generations of designers have sought to work off their debt to this motto. The design-artist Rolf Sachs, however, has developed a variation on this theme: form follows emotion. Must one always sit on a chair? Sachs does not necessarily think so. His work often does away with function altogether, as with the illuminated watering can made of of zinc and glass, "Pouring Light - pouring light," or the coffee table consisting of two wooden sledges, entitled "Insepar-able." Sachs always combines his art with humor.

 

Born in 1955 in Lausanne, the artist is a pioneer of Limited-Edition design: he transforms everyday objects and commodities into conceptual art, adopting familiar forms only to change them in the following moment. "I give the objects a bit of soul, "says Sachs.

"I give the objects a bit of soul."

The artist already caused quite a stir with his sculptural light objects. Works such as "rita wig light" (2004), a shining glass body with a wig of bright-red hair, and "Neon Immersion", a luminous spiral structure opening into a water-filled flask, show how far Sachs's creative breadth extends.

 

The chair - the greatest test for every designer- is Sachs's trademark. He analyzes it again and again, decomposes it into its component parts and recombines these with atypical materials. For example, the chairs might be made of soft silicone (Spineless Chair, 2006), or out of lead, so heavy that they can barely move.

But chairs also find practical use in Sachs's work. The Kevlar-chairs "Dirty Thoughts" (2009), for example, were made of materials that were pre-processed to display traces of use such as wine glass edges, splashes and stains. Two other, very minimalist versions can also be found in the important standard reference work for chair design, "1000 Chairs": these are "DJ Evolution" (1995) and "Original" (1993). The art market magazine Art Investor recently quoted Sachs regarding his new creative phase: "There are many exciting new concepts on which I am currently working," he said, his blue eyes flashing, as if to say: "Let's get started."

 

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