Thomas Demand
An essential catalog documenting German artist Thomas Demand's (b. 1964) exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London, from June to August 2006, published jointly by Serpentine Gallery and Schirmer/Mosel in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.
The publication centers on Demand's distinctive process: he meticulously reconstructs spaces—kitchens, parking garages, elevators, bureaucratic interiors—at full scale using only paper and cardboard, photographs the constructed environments with exacting precision, then destroys the models. The resulting images oscillate between documentary authenticity and uncanny artifice, their subjects often drawn from mass-media images of politically or historically charged sites. Beatriz Colomina's accompanying essay, "Media as Modern Architecture," examines how contemporary architecture relies on mass-media imagery, while an interview between Demand and filmmaker Alexander Kluge explores the conceptual implications of the artist's three-dimensional to two-dimensional transformation process. Designed by Supermarket/Naomi Mizusaki, the catalog includes wallpaper swatches from the exhibition installation.
Thomas Demand came to international prominence in the 1990s as a key figure in German contemporary photography alongside Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer. His work is held in major collections including MoMA, Tate, and the Guggenheim, and he is represented by Sprüth Magers, Matthew Marks Gallery, and Esther Schipper. The Serpentine exhibition marked a significant mid-career survey of his photographic oeuvre, examining how his meticulously crafted paper reconstructions interrogate the relationship between image, memory, and truth.
