Thomas Demand

Originally trained as a sculptor, the German-born photographer Thomas Demand builds life-size models of architectural interiors out of paper and cardboard. Often culled from the media or the pages of history, the faithful facsimiles range from representing Hitler’s underground bunker to Jackson Pollock’s studio in Long Island. Ultimately, these elaborate works are short-lived; the artist destroys the reproduction after photographing them. Conceptual in nature, these photographs are three times removed from the original scenes of history, evoking a sense of the uncanny. In recent years, Demand has turned to taking saturated cellphone photographs of everyday objects (bathroom tiles, paper cups wedged in fence chains, a bar of soap), again estranging viewers from the familiar and mundane. 

Demand has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum in Berlin, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Fondazione Prada in Italy, and the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain in France. In 2004, Demand represented Germany at the Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil. He has also participated in the Gwangju Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Venice Biennale, Sydney Biennale, and Carnegie International.