Thomas Demand
Thomas Demand (* 1964 in Munich ) is an artist who recreates crime scene and press photos in great detail from paper in order to then photograph them. These “second” photographs will then be exhibited after the model has been destroyed . He studied in Munich , Düsseldorf and London and has been a professor at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg since 2011, majoring in sculpture with a focus on photography. He lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles .
Exhibition form
Demand exhibits life-size photographs, which, thanks to their low hanging, allow access to the pictorial space. He also makes analog animation films (35 mm).
Working method
After a photographic template or from memory, Demand builds a model out of paper and cardboard. This model is created either (mostly for interiors) on a scale of 1: 1 or (for external representations of large architectures) in the size that the subsequent photograph should have. The resulting life-size photographs are then the final works of art .
Depicted
Demand often uses older newspaper images as a template . Signs of the event shown are systematically eliminated in the built model; likewise the people present in the original photographs. Nevertheless, the content of the image remains so distinctive that the subject can be clearly identified if the photographic source is known. The pictorial themes presented are socially relevant events, which nonetheless often contain a personal reference to the artist.
His understanding of art
Demand does not see himself as a photographer, although this is his exhibition medium. At the same time, however, he is also not exclusively a model maker, since the focus of his artistic work is on photographic reproduction, so that he is best understood as a reproducer of the media or as an illusionist .
Demand used to be concerned with sculpture , but then switched to cheap materials, mainly paper, cardboard and cardboard. So he could build his models in a day and therefore throw them away again without any problems. In order to document the resulting but quickly ephemeral sculptures, he began to photograph them.
Works and crime scene
- Tunnel (1999) recreates a tracking shot through the tunnel in which Diana Mountbatten-Windsor died.
- Bathroom (1997) is a re-enactment of the photography that went around the world in connection with the death of Uwe Barschel .
Other works
The extension of the Lenbachhaus in Munich, which opened in May 2013, is adorned with blue Lenbachhaus lettering in front of the gold-colored facade, for which Demand combined an old font from the 19th century with a modern one.
Awards
- 2018: Great Art Prize Berlin
- 2003 scholarship at the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo
Solo exhibitions (selection)
- Focus , Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth , 2016
- Latent Forms , Sprüth Magers , London , 2015
- Model studies , Hombroich rocket station , Neuss , 2015
- Daily Show , The Common Guild, Glasgow , 2015
- Model Studies (KŌTŌ-KU) , Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo , 2015
- Pacific Sun , Los Angeles County Museum of Art , Los Angeles , 2014/2015
- Dailies 2008-2014 , Sprüth Magers, Berlin , 2014
- Model Studies , Avlskarl Gallery, Copenhagen , 2014
- Animations , DHC Art Center, Montréal , 2013
- Thomas Demand , National Gallery of Victoria , Melbourne , 2012/2013
- Animations , Des Moines Art Center , Des Moines , 2012
- Model Studies , Esther Schipper Galerie, Berlin , 2012
- Thomas Demand , Museum of Contemporary Art , Tokyo , 2012
- Thomas Demand , Matthew Marks Gallery, New York City , 2012
- Thomas Demand , Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin , 2009-10
- Thomas Demand, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich, 2002/03
Group exhibitions (selection)
- Never enough: Monika Sprüth and art , MEWO Kunsthalle , Memmingen , 2017
- Photography Reinvented: The Collection of Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker , National Gallery of Art , Washington, DC , 2016
- Concrete. Thomas Demand. David Maljkovic , Kunsthalle Wien , Vienna , 2016
- L'Image Volée , Fondazione Prada , Milan , 2016
- Fascination Photography , Essl Collection Museum , Klosterneuburg , 2015/2016
- Perfect Likeness. Photography and Composition , Armand Hammer Museum of Art , Los Angeles , 2015
- New Discoveries and other Obsessions , Musée d'Art Contemporain du Montréal, Montréal , 2015
- Visual Deception: Into the Future , Nagoya City Art Museum , Nagoya , 2015
- One Million Years - System and Symptom , Kunstmuseum Basel , Basel , 2014/2015
- Vertigo of Reality , Akademie der Künste (Berlin) , Berlin , 2014
- Paparazzi , Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt , Frankfurt am Main , 2014
- The boat is leaking. The captain song. (With Alexander Kluge & Anna Viebrock ; curation Udo Kittelmann ) Fondazione Prada , Venice , 2017
curator
In 2016 he curated the exhibition L'Image volée at the Fondazione Prada in Milan with works by 60 artists from 1820 to the present day.
Films via Thomas Demand
- Playing with memory - the world of images of Thomas Demand. Documentation, Germany, 2011, 26 min., First broadcast on arte: June 12, 2011, script & director: Jeremy JP Fekete , production: rb / arte, summary by arte, nominated for the 21st German Camera Prize 2011, category: Documentary / Documentation "Editing", table of contents (PDF file; 274 kB) from Deutscher Kamerapreis, trailer on YouTube .
Web links
- Thomas Demand website
- Video Thomas Demand. Nationalgalerie - Interview Udo Kittelmann, director of the Nationalgalerie, curator of the exhibition
- Interview with Thomas Demand in Zeit-Magazin 39/2009
- Literature by and about Thomas Demand in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ The golden reconciliation. In: FAZ , May 8, 2013, page 25.
- ↑ Thomas Demand receives the Great Art Prize Berlin 2018. In: Website of the Academy of Arts. January 16, 2018, accessed March 23, 2018 .
- ↑ Villa Massimo | Thomas Demand. Retrieved August 21, 2019 .
- ^ Thomas Demand. May 19 - June 8, 2012. Website of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (English).
- ↑ Thomas Demand - September 18, 2009 to January 17, 2010, Neue Nationalgalerie. SMB website .
- ↑ Irene Netta, Ursula Keltz: 75 years of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich . Ed .: Helmut Friedel. Self-published by the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88645-157-7 , p. 232 .
- ↑ Thomas Demand: L'image volée - Fondazione Prada. Foundation website, accessed March 23, 2018.
- ↑ Take the pictures away from them again! In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , March 20, 2016, page 47.
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Demand, Thomas |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German artist |
DATE OF BIRTH | 1964 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Munich |