Thomas Cyrill Demand (born 1964) is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg. He makes photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces,Thomas Demand, 6 June - 20 August 2006 Serpentine Gallery. often sites loaded with social and political meanings.Thomas Demand: The Dailies, April 14 – May 19, 2012, Sprüth Magers London. Demand thus describes himself not as a photographer, but as a conceptual artist for whom photography is an intrinsic part of his creative process.Lucy Davies (March 15, 2011), Thomas Demand: One I Made Earlier The Daily Telegraph.
Demand had his first solo exhibition at Tanit Galerie in Munich in 1992. In 2004 the Kunsthaus Bregenz mounted the first comprehensive presentation of Demand's major works from 1994 until 2004. Demand's work later was the subject of mid-career retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2005 and at the Neue Nationalgalerie in 2009. Other solo exhibitions include Serpentine Gallery (2006), London, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Fondazione Prada, Venice (both 2007), and the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris (2001).
Education 1987–1989 Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich 1989–1992 Kunstakademie Düsseldorf 1992 Cité des Arts, Paris 1993–1994 Goldsmiths College, London, M.A.
Work Demand makes photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces, often sites loaded with social and political meanings. He thus describes himself not as a photographer, but as a conceptual artist for whom photography is an intrinsic part of his creative process. Having studied sculpture under Fritz Schwegler at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alongside Katharina Fritsch and Thomas Schütte, Demand began his career as a sculptor.Collection: Thomas Demand Queensland Art Gallery. In 1993, he began to use photography to record his elaborate, life-sized paper-and-cardboard constructions of actually or formerly existing environments and interior spaces, and soon started to create constructions for the sole purpose of photographing them. The photograph he takes of this model with a large-format-camera is the final stage of his work, and it is only this image, most often executed in an edition of six, that is exhibited unframed behind Plexiglas, not the models. On the contrary, Demand destroys his “life-size environments” after he has photographed them. One notable exception is his large scale model for Grotto (2006), inspired by a postcard of a Mallorcan grotto Demand has never visited, which was later exhibited.Thomas Demand, October 21 – November 25, 2006 Regen Projects, Los Angeles. The life sized models are highly detailed, yet they retain subtle but deliberate flaws and anachronisms, such as an unnaturally uniform texture; according to art critic Michael Kimmelman, "the reconstructions were meant to be close to, but never perfectly, realistic so that the gap between truth and fiction would always subtly show".Michael Kimmelman (March 4, 2005), Painterly Photographs of a Slyly Handmade Reality New York Times.
In The Dailies (2012), Demand for the first time experimented with the long-outmoded process of dye transfer, which involves fixing dyes with gelatine to ordinary paper. The practice was chosen by the artist for the saturated, but not garish colours, the spatial depth, the intense darkness, the durability and the extent to which the three primary colours can be modified, unlike ordinary prints.
While the works' titles – Studio (1997), Zimmer (Room) (1996), Treppenhaus (Staircase) (1995) – are studiously devoid of superfluous information, the subjects represented in Demand's photographs often relate to pre-existing press images showing scenes of cultural or political relevance. The New York hotel room in which L. Ron Hubbard worked on Dianetics, for example, was the starting point for Zimmer (Room) (1996)."New Photography", 1997 Museum of Modern Art, New York. Zeichensaal (Drafting Room) (1996) is inspired by a photograph of the studio of Richard Vorhölzer, the architect who was in charge of much urban planning for postwar Germany; Scheune (Barn) (1997) is based on a Hans Namuth photograph of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in Pollock's East Hampton studio;Roberta Smith (September 11, 1998), Art in Review: Thomas Demand at 303 Gallery New York Times. Studio (1997) derives from a photograph of the 1970s television set for the German "What's My Line?". Later in his career Demand turned his interest towards the political world: Podium (2000) represents the location where Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević gave his Gazimestan speech on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the Serbian defeat by the Turks;Thomas Demand, Podium (2000) Christie's New York, May 11, 2004. in Attempt (2005), Demand has reconstructed the studio of an artist whom Baader-Meinhof terrorists targeted in the 1970s in order to blow up the Karlsruhe house of the state's prosecutor next door;Thomas Demand, 7 June - 2 July 2005 Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Kitchen (2004) is based on soldiers' snapshots of the compound near Tikrit where Saddam Hussein was captured.Adrian Searle (June 21, 2005), The devil in the detail The Guardian. Demand's series Yellowcake (2007) portrays the Nigerian Embassy in Rome, the site of a burglary in January 2001 that was used to prove Hussein's attempt to purchase uranium.Anne Wehr, Thomas Demand Frieze Magazine, Issue 114, April 2008. More recently, the photograph Kontrollraum (Control Room) (2011), for instance, purports to show the interior of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant during its tsunami-induced meltdown.Karen Rosenberg (June 14, 2012), Art Review: Thomas Demand New York Times.
Commissioned by The New York Times, Demand's “Presidency” series depicting the Oval Office appeared on the cover and inside The New York Times Magazine, November 9, 2008 issue following the election of President Barack Obama. The five large prints, simply titled Presidency I-V, were created in the last weeks of the Bush presidency and later, with the support of Ronald Lauder and other donors,Oval Office prints a nod to Demand’s artful artifice Washington Times, May 10, 2009. given to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 2009.National Gallery of Art Acquires Presidency I–V Photographs by Thomas Demand National Gallery of Art, Washington. In 2011, Demand created Metzler-Saal (2011), his largest site-specific work to date. Commissioned by the Städel Museum, the photographic work appears as if the museum's main hall is lined floor to ceiling with deep purple curtains. Demand was inspired by the drapery depicted in many of the Städel's Old Master paintings.Javier Pes (October 15, 2011), Curtains up for Thomas Demand] The Art Newspaper.
A result of a residency at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles where he discovered the archive of architect John Lautner, Model Studies (2011) is the first time that Demand photographed architectural models that were not his own. The series comprises a total of 32 close-ups of cardboard, tar paper, and foam core panels, depicting the study models from many angles.Thomas Demand: Model Studies, 28 January 2012 - 15 April 2012 Nottingham Contemporary.
Because Demand is working from models, the absence of people in his photographs is "conspicuous and thematic". The closest Demand has ever come to depicting people are the cut-out silhouettes of politicians and heads of state depicted in the picture frames arranged on Sir Edward Heath’s grand piano (Flügel/Grand Piano, 1993).Jörg Heiser, Pulp Fiction: Thomas Demand Frieze Magazine, Issue 73, March 2003. Furthermore, every trace of language has completely vanished: the papers strewn across the work table and floor in Büro (Office) (1995) have no text on them; the labels next to the doorbells that are the subject of Hinterhaus (2005) are variously colored but bear no names.Barry Schwabsky (October 21, 2009), A Makeshift World: On Thomas Demand The Nation.
Demand cites Gerhard Richter and Ed Ruscha as sources of inspiration.Laura Barnett (April 25, 2011), Portrait of the artist: Thomas Demand The Guardian.
Films Demand has also experimented with film in works such as Tunnel (1999), a tracking shot from a driver’s perspective through an empty tunnel lined by concrete pillars; the tunnel is modelled on the Paris underpass where Princess Diana died. Recorder (2002) is a 35 mm-film loop in which a paper model of an eight-track reel-to-reel recording device appears to play the Beach Boys album Smile (1966), a recording that was until recently lost;Thomas Demand Guggenheim Collection. the sound of a piano playing a variation on ‘Bicycle Rider’, an instrumental from the Smile sessions, can be heard on the soundtrack. Rolltreppe (Escalator) (2000) is an animation of 24 still images shown in a continual loop.Thomas Demand, February 24 - April 7 2001 303 Gallery, New York. Showing an escalator without people, taken from surveillance footage, Demand here is referencing an escalator near Charing Cross Bridge in London where a gang was caught on surveillance camera shortly after they had robbed two men and thrown them into the Thames, killing one of them. Trick (2004) refers back to the beginnings of cinema and is based on one of the first films of the Lumière brothers, Assiettes tournantes (Turning Plates) of 1896. The one-minute filmThomas Demand, Trick (2004) MoMA, New York. re-creates a sequence in which a performer executes a stunt by spinning a set of bowls and plates on a tabletop. Camera (2007) presents a surveillance camera as it pans a public space, complete with ambient sound.Thomas Demand: Animations, November 2 — December 16, 2012 Des Moines Art Center. In Rain (2008), Demand painstakingly re-created the effect of raindrops falling onto a hard surface, using cellophane candy wrappers and a sound track of eggs frying.
Filmed over fifteen months with the help of a 12-person team of animators, the 100-second animated film Pacific Sun (2012) is based on a video of cruise ship Pacific SunThomas Demand's Pacific Sun, March 29, 2012 Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. caught in a storm between the Republic of Vanuatu and Auckland, New Zealand which the artist found on YouTube, and follows the full narrative arc of the ship's violent encounter in the Tasman Sea. The film was made on a full scale set and, like Demand's models for his photographs, was completely constructed of paper and then destroyed. It comprises a total of 2,400 frames, filmed one at a time, as animators meticulously retraced the movements of each item in the ship's dining room, shifting the paper models of plates, lemons, pendant lamps, chairs, an upright piano, and a refrigerator by several millimeters at a time.Thomas Demand, May 5 - June 23, 2012 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. The question of why this particular event (which resulted in injuries but no deaths) merits such meticulous attention is left unanswered.
Curator In 2010, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco entrusted Demand with a role of guest curator for “La Carte d’Après Nature”, the opening exhibitionMichael Kimmelman (October 13, 2010), Arts Become Latest Luxuries Monaco Offers New York Times. of Villa Paloma, Monte Carlo. A modified version of this exhibition, which used Surrealist painter René Magritte as its theme and included films, photography, soundworks and architectural models from the 19th century to the present,Lance Esplund (September 3, 2011), Outside-the-Box Thinking Starts From the Inside Wall Street Journal. later travelled to Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.Karen Rosenberg (August 11, 2011), Out-Magritting Magritte, or at Least Coming Close New York Times. From October 2010 to June 2011, he was a Getty Scholar.Current Theme and Scholars in Residence 2010/2011 Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.