Tom Sachs’ Art Odyssey

photography by ALEX ANTITCH style by CAROLINE GAIMARI All customized NIKE sneakers by TOM SACHS Last year, Tom called to invite me for a tea ceremony. He had transformed a section of his wunderkammer studio into a subversion of a Japanese tea house, constructed with Con Edison excavation barriers and blue foam instead of rice paper and bamboo. I was deeply entranced in Tom’s remix of the tea ceremony when he stunned me by lifting the lid of a lacquer box that I assumed would contain an exquisite tea biscuit. Instead of a biscuit, it was a perfectly measured line of cocaine. The ceremony was confounding, but the taste of the carefully sourced matcha was transporting. Some months later, Tom told me the good news that his entire tea house along with its extensive Japanese garden and his bronze bonsai tree (made from 3,500 casts of Q-tips, tampon cases, tooth…