"Thomas Demand: Convincingly Real or Strangely Artificial"
2005-03-04 until 2005-05-30
Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY, USA

This exhibition will present the first comprehensive survey in the United States of the work of Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964), focusing on major works from 1993 to the present. Demand’s inventive and beautifully constructed photographs have won him wide recognition as one of the leading artists of his generation. Initially trained as a sculptor, Demand took up photography to document his paper sculptures.

Since 1993, the camera has become crucial to his creative practice. Regarding photography as a “constructed reality,” Demand begins with a pre-existing image, usually culled from the media, which he translates into a life-size paper model. 

Thomas Demand re-creates entire rooms, parking lots, hallways, and such diverse materials as wood, plastic, metal, cloth, and foliage, all in colored paper and cardboard, in scenes that look at once compellingly real and artificially strange. Once photographed, the models are destroyed; the actual work is the resulting photograph. Combining craftsmanship and conceptualism in equal parts, Demand plays distinct forms against each other, pushing the medium of photography toward uncharted frontiers. Organized by Roxana Marcoci, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography, Thomas Demand will be accompanied by a publication.  The exhibition is supported by Ninah and Michael Lynne and the Contemporary Arts Council and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.

IMAGE
Thomas Demand
Room (Zimmer). 1996
Chromogenic color print
67 3/4" x 7' 7 3/8" (172 x 232 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of the Nina W. Werblow Charitable Trust.
©2005 Thomas Demand

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of New York

Other Important Exhibitions in New York