The downtown sculptor Tom Sachs has built a name — and a career — on the unexpected. He often melds familiar objects with familiar logos to create work that is stuntier than the sum of its parts: A toilet made out of Prada shoe boxes. A guillotine emblazoned with the Chanel logo. Fast-food meals wrapped in Hermès packaging. A Tiffany-blue handgun with the company’s name on the grip.
But a sneaker with a Nike swoosh? Where’s the unexpected in that? The answer is in how difficult Mr. Sachs has made it to get your hands on a pair, considering they’re not meta-shoes, but official Nike products.
Compared with his heyday in late-’90s New York, Mr. Sachs, 59, who has designed nine Nike shoes since his first collaboration with the company in 2012, is now better known for his limited-edition drops than for his commentary on consumer culture. And his latest release may be most distinguished by how many hurdles he has constructed to buying it.
To be able to buy the shoe, customers needed to enroll in a virtual “Summer Camp” — a feature of a new app developed by Mr. Sachs’s studio — and complete the weekly challenges he began posting there in mid-July. (Self-improvement has been a preoccupation of Mr. Sachs’s recent work.) One week, users were instructed to shoot 10 free throws. Another week, they were to document their reading before bed.
The shoe, called the Mars Yard 3.0, represents a return for Mr. Sachs. His longtime partnership with Nike was paused two and a half years ago, after an article in New York magazine portrayed him as a nightmarish boss to his studio assistants.
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