Thomas Demand

Thomas Demand was born in Munich in 1964. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Munich, the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, the Cite des Arts, Paris, and Goldsmiths College, London. Demand begins by translating a preexisting image, usually culled from the media, into a life-size model he makes out of colored paper and cardboard. He recreates a room, a parking lot, a staircase, a landscape--then he photographs the model and destroys it. Demand's photographs appear at once compellingly real...See more

Thomas Demand was born in Munich in 1964. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Munich, the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, the Cite des Arts, Paris, and Goldsmiths College, London. Demand begins by translating a preexisting image, usually culled from the media, into a life-size model he makes out of colored paper and cardboard. He recreates a room, a parking lot, a staircase, a landscape--then he photographs the model and destroys it. Demand's photographs appear at once compellingly real and strangely artificial. Since their subjects--handcrafted facsimiles of both architectural spaces and natural environments--are themselves built in the image of other images, the photographs are three times removed from the scenes they seek to depict. Combining craftsmanship and conceptualism in equal parts, Demand pushes the medium of photography toward uncharted frontiers. See less