Thomas Demand
Thomas Demand, born 1964 in Munich, Germany, lives and works in Berlin. A trained sculptor, he took up photography to record his ephemeral paper constructions. In 1993, he turned the tables henceforth making constructions for the sole purpose of photographing them. Demand starts with found images, which he carefully reconstructs as detailed paper models before photographing them. The resulting photographs are therefore thrice removed from the scenes or objects they depict. Once they have been photographs, the models are destroyed. Combining sculpture and photography, craftsmanship and conceptualism, documentary reconstruction and staged reality, Demand pushes the medium of photography toward uncharted frontiers. This originality has earned him recognition as one of the most innovative artists of his generation.
Thomas Demand Editions
Cadavre Exquis / Manet Olympia / Demand
2020
Grotesques 32 and 53
2006
Five Drafts (Simulator)
2004
Pile (Stapel)
2001-2002
Cadavre Exquis / Manet Olympia / Demand
2020
From Cadavre Exquis / Manet Olympia
Digital pigment print, with several embossings, on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, hand-torn, 54 x 40 cm (21.25 x 15.75 in). Edition of 20, signed and numbered on label verso.
This edition by Thomas Demand is based on an exquisite corpse game initiated by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Eleven artists took up a detail or an idea from the previous work and interpreted it in their own technique. The starting point was Edouard Manet's Olympia. The series combines individual signatures and at the same time reflects central social themes of the year 2020.
EUR 1,150
Grotesques 32 and 53
2006
2 photogravures on rag paper, 73 x 57 cm (28¾ x 22½ in). Edition of 100, one image signed, the other numbered.
This edition is based on Thomas Demand’s 2006 work Grotto. Using a postcard as a starting point, the artist recreated a grotto located on the island Mallorca, Spain. Employing 30 tons of grey cardboard, shaped with the help of a computer and laid out to form a stratification with 900,000 sections, Demand carefully recreated the rock chamber, stalactites and stalagmites displayed on the postcard, which he then photographed.
Set EUR 2,500
Five Drafts (Simulator)
2004
Published for Kunsthaus Bregenz
Suite of 5 digital pigment prints on photo rag paper. Each print 38.5 x 38 cm (15 ¼ x 15 in). Edition of 60, signed and numbered on print 1.
This edition, consisting of five prints, presents different perspectives of a maquette of Thomas Demand's Space Simulator (2003), a work that refers to the Apollo simulator used in the 1960s. Demand examines the concepts of authenticity and representation by tracing the transformation process from reality to photography and model to reconstructed imagery. The cubist look and the simulation character of the work open up a multi-layered reflection on the tension between reality and illusion.
Set EUR 3,000
Pile (Stapel)
2001-2002
From Double Exposure
Two Lambda prints, 60 x 50 cm (23½ x 19¾ in) each. Edition of 45, signed and numbered.
Demand questions photography as the leading visual medium by recreating real scenes in elaborate paper models and then capturing them photographically. This process dissolves the connection between image and reality and questions the perception of reality. His deserted, anonymous scenes open up a space for association and interpretation. In this edition, Thomas Demand uses seemingly randomly scattered piles of paper to reconstruct the surreal scene of the controversial recount of votes in the US presidential election in Florida in 2000.
