When Donald Trump held a press conference in January 2017, just before his inauguration as U.S. President, he appeared before the press alongside a table piled high with manila folders (View this photo). He claimed these documents represented the agreements he had signed to transfer control of the Trump Organization to his children, effectively relinquishing his business responsibilities. The stacks of folders were striking but enigmatic; journalists were told they could not examine their contents. This left many wondering, were the documents genuine, or were they mere stage props? The mystery was never resolved.
Artist Thomas Demand found this scene fascinating and reinterpreted it in his 2017 artwork "Folders", meticulously recreating the table and stacks of documents in his signature style. Demand's photographic depiction of the recreated moment is now featured in his retrospective exhibition "The Stutter of History" at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) in Taipei, Taiwan (running until 11th May).
The exhibition showcases around 70 works spanning Demand's 30-year career, highlighting his unique approach at the crossroads of sculpture and photography.
Born in Munich in 1964, Demand studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, later earning a master's degree in fine arts from Goldsmiths, University of London.
In the early stages of his career, Demand crafted paper and cardboard sculptures, using photography primarily to document his creations. However, this process prompted him to reflect on the contrast between three-dimensional objects and their flat, photographic representations. This shift in perspective led him to focus on creating objects specifically for the camera, a method that has since become the foundation of his practice.
Thomas Demand meticulously reconstructs life-sized scenes of seemingly mundane images sourced from mass media, using paper and cardboard. He then photographs these crafted scenes to produce images that closely resemble the originals. Once the photographic phase of the project is complete, he destroys the models, leaving only large-format photographic prints as the final artwork.
Through this process, Demand challenges the perception of photography as an inherently objective or truthful medium, emphasizing the gap between reality and representation, a tension similar to what journalists faced when confronted with Trump's enigmatic stack of papers.
The subjects of Demand's works often stem from news photographs depicting significant historical or social events, reimagining pivotal moments that have shaped Western or global narratives.
Some of his earlier works explore German history through iconic images of events he did not personally witness but learned about through visual records. Examples include the bomb-damaged room where Hitler narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 1944 ("Raum / Room," 1994) and the film archives of Nazi-supported filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl ("Archiv / Archive," 1995).
Demand has also recreated scenes tied to major world events. These include the hotel room in Russia where Edward Snowden, the American National Security Agency whistleblower, first stayed as a fugitive ("Refuge Series," 2021); the storeroom of the Wildenstein Institute in Paris, where missing artworks were recovered during a police raid ("Vault," 2012); and the abandoned control room of the Fukushima nuclear power plant following the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake ("Kontrollraum / Control Room," 2011).
Thomas Demand's works also explore the interplay between artificial and natural worlds. In "Clearing" (2003), he used over 270,000 paper leaves to construct an idyllic forest scene with sunlight filtering through the canopy. The work reflects humanity's idealized and often unrealistic vision of nature as pure and untouched.
Another ambitious piece, "Grotte / Grotto" (2006), was created using 36 tons of cardboard. Demand studied hundreds of postcards of caves, commonly sold in gift shops worldwide, to construct a life-sized grotto complete with stalactites formed over millennia.
"Grotto" is the only model among Demand's works that has been preserved, and it is on permanent display at the Prada Foundation in Milan. Demand's relationship with the Fondazione Prada is longstanding: he collaborated with filmmaker Alexander Kluge and stage and costume designer Anna Viebrock for the widely praised exhibition "The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied" that was on view at Fondazione Prada in Venice in 2017.
At the entrance to the TFAM exhibition, Demand's wall-sized photographic wallpaper "Hanami" (2014) creates an immersive experience inspired by nature. Made by reconstructing countless cherry blossoms from paper, the piece invites viewers to reflect on the fleeting and cyclical nature of life, evoking the delicate and ephemeral beauty of the blossoms in full bloom.
In 2008, Thomas Demand shifted focus from monumental subjects to more personal and everyday themes, resulting in his "Dailies" series.
Using the same meticulous methods - transforming images into paper sculptures and photographing them - Demand drew inspiration from snapshots he captured on his mobile phone. These seemingly banal scenes include an empty yogurt cup with a pink plastic spoon left on a shelf, a bar of soap balanced on the edge of a sink, a pile of letters spilling out from under a door, and cups placed in the holes of a chain-link fence.
Through the "Dailies" series, Demand crafts an autobiographical narrative, celebrating the understated beauty of life's minutiae. By weaving the mundane into his work, he presents a more holistic view of history: one that encompasses not only monumental global events but also the quiet, everyday details of individual lives.
These unremarkable yet evocative moments encourage viewers to reflect on the importance of the countless images we take, share, and consume obsessively on social media and messaging platforms.
Demand has also ventured into stop-motion animation, using the medium to explore motion and time. In "Pacific Sun" (2012), he recreated viral surveillance footage showing a cruise ship cabin battered by rogue waves off the coast of New Zealand. Tables, chairs, lockers, paper plates, and computer monitors slide back and forth chaotically. Demand spent months reconstructing the tumultuous scene frame by frame, using paper and cardboard to capture its bizarre, almost whimsical energy.
In "Balloons" (2018), a string of balloons tied to a red plastic clothespin drifts lazily across a brick and concrete sidewalk, propelled by the wind. The balloons themselves remain outside the frame, their presence suggested only by shadows dancing gracefully on the ground. These shadows, accompanied by the swaying of tree branches and the occasional flutter of fallen leaves, transform a fleeting urban moment into a poetic meditation on movement and light.
In 2011, during his residency at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, Thomas Demand initiated his "Model Studies" series. Departing from his usual practice of reconstructing images through sculpture, Demand turned his focus directly onto the preparatory paper models created by architects and designers. His photographs capture abstract, fragmented elements within these models, exploring the creative process behind their design.
His fascination with models and architecture has also led to collaborations with renowned international architects like David Chipperfield and Rem Koolhaas, on projects ranging from exhibitions and installations to architectural building designs. Demand also appeared four times at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
The "Model Studies" series includes the provisional maquettes of figures such as John Lautner, one of America's most influential modernist architects, as well as contemporary architectural firms like SANAA. It also extends to unexpected realms, such as the radical paper dress patterns of fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa (a delightful nod for fashion enthusiasts). Together, these images unveil the profound role of paper in art and design, offering a glimpse into the creative and structural underpinnings of the objects and spaces around us.
Through layers of reproduction and translation from one medium to the other, Thomas Demand’s works reveal the inherent gaps in our perception of truth. While history persists in collective and individual memory as images, his ghostly creations underscore how fragile materials like paper can carry the weight of both personal moments and world events. Besides, by exploring the tension between photographic representations and reality, Demand questions the inertia of image culture and the paradox of perception. As he puts it: "I guess the core of it is making the world into a model by redoing it and stripping off the anecdotal part, that’s when it becomes an allegory, and the project becomes a metaphor. Making models is a cultural technique - without it we would be blind."
Image credits for this post
1. Thomas Demand, Folders, 2017, C-Print/Diasec, 125 × 195 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
2. Thomas Demand, Archiv / Archive, 1995, C-Print/Diasec, 183.5 × 233 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
3. Thomas Demand, Kontrollraum / Control Room, 2011, C-Print/Diasec, 200 × 300 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
4. Thomas Demand, Pacific Sun (still), 2012, Video, 2.02 min, stereo (3,050 frames). Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
5. Thomas Demand, Refuge II, 2021, C-Print/Diasec, 160 × 200 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
6. Thomas Demand, Grotte / Grotto, 2006, C-Print/Diasec, 198 × 440 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
7. Thomas Demand, Hanami, 2014, UV Print on Non-Woven Wallpaper, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
8. Thomas Demand, Daily #22, 2014, Framed Dye Transfer Print, 82.3 × 58.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
9. Thomas Demand, Starling, (Model Studies 4), 2020, Framed Pigment Print, 135 × 172 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
10 - 17. Installation views, "Thomas Demand: The Stutter of History", Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
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