| Description |
Thomas Demand was born in 1964 in Munich and now lives in Berlin and London. His work has been exhibited internationally at the Tate Gallery, the Carnegie International 1999/2000, the Kunsthalle in Zurich, the Sydney Biennial, and elsewhere.
Originally trained as a sculptor, Thomas Demand approaches photography as a means of preserving ephemeral paper constructions but inevitably the camera becomes central to his creative process. At first glance, Demand's works seem to present fragments of a hyperreal and familiar place but, before long, they reveal their true identity: a wholly artificial world reduced to generic forms. Large immaculate photographs of interiors and architectural exteriors—a world peopled with inanimate objects and bathed in uniform lighting—are mounted on Plexiglas, which underscores the materiality of the photographic object. For each of his reproductions, Demand constructs life-size models using paper and cardboard, and these forms always allow signs of their true nature to show through. 50 color illustrations. |