Thomas Demand

Originally trained as a sculptor, Thomas Demand approaches photography as a means of preserving ephemeral paper constructions but inevitably the camera becomes central to his creative process.

At first glance, Demand's works seem to present fragments of a hyperreal and familiar place but, before long, they reveal their true identity: a wholly artificial world reduced to generic forms. Large immaculate photographs of interiors and architectural exteriors -- a world peopled with inanimate objects and bathed in uniform lighting -- are mounted on Plexiglas, which underscores the materiality of the photographic object. For each of his reproductions, Demand constructs life-size models using paper and cardboard, and these forms always allow signs of their true nature to show through.