Space Oddity

New York sculptor Tom Sachs is clearly having his moment. After two solo shows earlier this year - a retrospective of his riff on boom boxes at the Brooklyn Museum, and his slightly wacky take on the ancient traditional Japanese tea ceremony at the Noguchi Museum in Queens - he has landed at YBCA, where he has taken over nearly the entire campus with "Space Program: Europa," a handmade, futuristic sculptural exhibition that transforms the multi-disciplinary facility into an aerospace flight center and a Japanese tea garden, among other things.

Rest assured it's unlike anything you've seen before. Sachs chose YBCA as a launch pad because he regards it as "the punk rock institution of San Francisco," and the show is at its funky best as a showcase for his ingenuity and mad-genius, off-kilter imagination. Take the spray-painted steel lobster with a pair of red pliers for claws; a tiered, re-cut Samurai helmet, actually an orange hard hat with a rear neck-guard and a feather duster serving as a warrior's plume; or the Pez dispenser with the pistachio-colored head of the Jedi Master, Yoda. Admit it: You wouldn't have dreamed these up, but when you think about it, the concepts make perfect, semi-nutso sense.

Sachs, who briefly apprenticed with architect Frank Gehry and started out embracing the abstract formalism still evident in his work, is a practitioner of bricolage, the building of functional contraptions with found or accessible objects some might consider junk, refashioned into something new and unexpected. He has made Knoll office furniture out of phone books and duct tape, a toilet forged from once-prized Prada shoeboxes, a baby blue "Tiffany" Glock pistol, a Chanel guillotine that he calls "a synthesis of France's two greatest exports," and a Barbie slave ship. (Next to space, Barbie is Sachs' magnificent obsession.)

Since 2007, however, he has been thinking big, fine-tuning his very own space program, whose previous iteration "Space Program 2.0: MARS" sent a pair of female astronauts in Tyvek space suits on an expedition to the Red Planet. For that elaborate project, Sachs and his team constructed a sophisticated outer-space mission with everyday materials like tape, plastic, steel, glue and plywood, and put on a live demonstration on the vast floor of New York's Park Avenue Armory in 2012.

He has now embarked on a third DIY voyage to the far reaches of the solar system, demonstrating how to take a trip to space without congressional funding. One of his largest and most detailed ventures to date, its objective is the colonization of Europa, the icy sixth moon of Jupiter, which scientists believe harbors oceans and evidence of life. It should be noted that Sachs is on track to beat the competition there, including NASA, which won't launch its own mission until 2020. "I don't have time to waste," quips Sachs, who recently turned 50. "I want to go now."

That impatience to acquire things and experiences he craves has fueled his inventiveness since childhood. As a kid growing up in Westport, Connecticut, he made toys he wanted, and as an adult he created versions of lust objects like cameras, luxury cars, Brancusi sculptures and the off-white "Grace Kelly" handbag on view here. The original, produced in France, can sell for as much as $50,000; Sachs' rendition substitutes plywood for the joys of supple leather. That work and others are emblematic of his mischievous humor and playful though pointed indictment of the consumerism with which he has a love/hate relationship.

In the age of slick high-tech, Sachs touts the imperfections of objects that make no attempt to conceal the "fingerprints" of their maker. "It's as if he forcibly removed himself from the 20th century and put himself back in the 19th," observed his friend, author Malcolm Gladwell. "[His work] is concerned with the personal act of production at a time when the rest of us are preoccupied with the impersonal act of consumption."

At the exhibition, visitors will encounter a tongue-in-cheek "wall of fame" overview of Sachs' career: A functional, foamcore, "incinerating" lavatory; a welded bronze bonsai tree cast from 3,500 individual tampons and Q-tips; and a 23-foot-tall landing excursion module (LEM) modeled on the Apollo program. One can climb up a ladder to enter the two-level, air-conditioned LEM, which is like a tree house for space nerds, with a liquor cabinet fully stocked with Jack Daniels and a computer whose knobs and gizmos trigger thunderous booms.

The frat-boy tenor is reinforced by a couple of nude pinups and a tall, refrigerated vending machine dispensing cans of beer and chilled vodka via a gun operated by a red button. Draped in black and crowned with a Darth Vader helmet, it's tucked away behind the "Mission Control" hub, a bank of 50 video monitors that coordinate landing and launch sequences. Nearby, the "Rescue" exhibit, a hollowed-out pinball machine built with striped ConEd barriers, is outfitted with a toy aircraft carrier floating in Saran Wrap and a Vertibird helicopter parked on the deck; a strip of masking tape warns: "Don't fucking touch." The "Launch" display features a small model rocket ship that emits steam, accompanied by sound effects, as it's propelled up its plywood scaffolding.

In the mood for Europa Ice Balls served with Yamazaki scotch and OCD rehab? On your way out, stop by the Logjam Cafe, where the tip jar is festooned with a miniature, bloodied butcher gleefully waving a cleaver. Coffee, anyone?

A five-hour marathon demonstration of the mission's operations conducted by Sachs last Saturday sold out, but the event will be reprised closing weekend; be sure to book passage for lift-off ahead of time.

Through Jan. 15, 2017. Info: ybca.org