Thomas Demand
Thomas Demand was born in 1964 in Munich. He attended the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München from 1987 to 1989, the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1989 to 1992, and Goldsmiths College in London from 1993 to 1994. Originally trained as a sculptor, he developed a photographic practice involving the construction of life-size models of architectural interiors out of paper and cardboard. The range of architectural types and subject matter represented by these models—many of which are based on mass-media imagery—has gradually expanded over time. Room (1994) simulates the bunker where the last failed attempt was made on Hitler's life; Corridor (1995), the hallway leading to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment; Office (1996), the East Berlin headquarters of the Stasi secret police; Barn (1997), Jackson Pollock's Long Island studio as seen in a widely reproduced photograph by Hans Namuth. For Poll (2001), Demand reproduced images of the Palm Beach County Emergency Operation Center, where the recount for the 2000 United States presidential election took place. In recent years, Demand has experimented with film in works such as Recorder (2002), 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; the sound of a piano can be heard on the soundtrack.
Since his first solo exhibition, at Galerie Tanit in Munich in 1992, Demand has shown at numerous international galleries as well as at the Kunsthalle Zürich (1998), Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris (2000), Sprengel Museum Hannover (2001), and SITE Santa Fe (2002). His work has been included in New Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1996), Elsewhere at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (1997), Berlin Biennale (1998), Moving Pictures at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2002 and 2003), and Bienal de São Paulo (2004). Demand lives and works in Berlin and London.
