Published by Walther König, Köln. Foreword by Karola Kraus. Text by Karl Schlögel, Bart Lootsma, Thomas Demand. Conversations with Bart Lootsma.
This volume records two recent Demand projects: Embassy (2007) and Presidency (2008). For both series, Demand used images of an embassy interior and the Oval Office at the White House, and laboriously reconstructed the rooms as life-size models. After Demand photographed them, the rooms were destroyed, but this volume examines the entire process, from photograph to sculpture to photograph.
Thomas Demand’s photographic practice--the depiction of meticulously recreated life-size interiors and environments--takes on a new twist with this beautifully produced volume. The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles is home to the architectural maquettes of architect John Lautner, whose extraordinary buildings are major highlights of Californian architecture. Lautner’s space-age structures--such as the legendary “Chemosphere,” a four-bedroom house resembling a flying saucer, mounted atop a 20-foot concrete pillar--are particularly beautiful and toy-like in their maquette versions, and for this project, Demand photographed 12 of these models in loving, close-up detail. Model Studies includes more than 130 color images of Lautner’s models. With this volume, Demand, who has always been concerned with the intersections of art and architecture, now looks at the architect as sculptor, paying tribute to Lautner on the centenary of the architect’s birth.
PUBLISHER Ivorypress
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 4.25 x 6 in. / 200 pgs / 131 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/31/2012 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2012 p. 66
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788493834098TRADE List Price: $27.00 CAD $30.00
Published by Progetto Prada Arte. Foreword by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli.Text by Germano Celant, Alex Farquharson, Robert Storr, Carlo Bonini.
This elegant, boxed set introduces two new works by Thomas Demand, both presented during the 2007 Venice Biennale. The first volume presents “Processo Grottesco,” a life-sized paper model of a grotto--complete with stalagmites and stalactites--that was exhibited along with other source materials and Demand’s final photographic images. With a section of its pages cut in two, so that one can flip through old cave postcards on top or details of the finished artwork on the bottom, this volume contains rich, exhaustive documentation of the project, including historical documents, working drawings, models in progress, close-up details and final artworks, as well as an essay by Germano Celant. The second, slimmer, silver-edged volume presents the Yellowcake photographs, which portray the Nigerian Embassy in Rome--famous for “sparking” the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq. It includes essays by Robert Storr and Alex Farquharson, as well as a summary of “Nigergate” by investigative journalist Carlo Bonini.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Andreas Bee. Contributions by Dieter Dath, Christian Demand, Joachim Valentin, Udo Kittelmann.
The Berlin-based conceptual artist Thomas Demand, born in 1964 in Munich, makes hypnotically '"off" large-scale photographs of painstakingly rendered construction-paper models of architectural spaces and natural environments that he fabricates in his studio. In this small, tight board book printed on thick matte paper, Demand documents his most recent project: a series of five photographs that respond to the "degenerate" mid-century painter Max Beckmann's recently discovered lithograph series, Apocalypse. In Demand's interpretation, the horrifying incident is not Biblical; instead he recreates, with incredibly creepy precision, the environment of a provincial German pub where a recent child abuse and murder scandal took place. The 52 reproductions in Klause reveal cinematically suspenseful details of this project, but do not include the five resulting photographic artworks, which were unveiled during the Summer of 2006 at the Modern Art Museum of Frankfurt.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Text by Ulrich Baer, Dave Eggers, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Rachael Thomas, David Foster Wallace.
Stairs, ladders and lifts are the motifs of Thomas Demand's latest monograph, L'Esprit d'Escalier, which is published on the occasion of his show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. The title actually refers to so-called "staircase wit," that concise French expression for the chagrin of missed retorts--those hapless comebacks one only ever thinks up belatedly (i.e. when already descending the stairs): "I should've said (fill in blank)!" etc. One of Demand's ironic allusions to his title is a new work titled "Landing," which shows the shards of broken Qing vases on a staircase--a mishap caused by a visitor to The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge in January 2006, who stumbled on his shoelaces and crashed into the three eighteenth-century vases, smashing them to pieces. As ever, Demand combines conceptual rigor and exacting craft in his painstakingly re-created sets, with their eerie edge of artifice. L'Esprit d'Escalier presents an overview of his current work in 23 large photographs, plus a film project and an architectural installation specially prepared for his Irish Museum exhibition. Alongside an excerpt from David Foster Wallace's Girl with Curious Hair, it also includes commissioned writings by Dave Eggers, Paul Oliver, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Leith, Rachael Thomas and Enrique Juncosa.
Volume number 10 in the Conversation Series with the influential museum director, curator, writer and conversationalist Hans Ulrich Obrist, is given over to an intensive talk with the important German conceptual artist, Thomas Demand, who constructs precise environments out of paper maquettes, which are then photographed to haunting effect. Topics include concepts and rules of operation, the reconstruction and reverberation of history, work processes, studio realities and significant exhibitions of recent years. This wide-ranging conversation, modestly illustrated with black-and-white images, is as intelligent as it is revealing, giving the reader an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of two of the most brilliant players on the international art scene. Demand lives between Berlin and New York, where a retrospective of his work was shown at The Museum of Modern Art in 2005. Hans Ulrich Obrist is the Co-Director of the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, as well as the Serpentine Gallery, London, where he lives and works.
Thomas Demand: Model Studies
Thomas Demand: Processo Grottesco / Yellowcake
Thomas Demand: Klause
Thomas Demand: L'Esprit d'Escalier
Hans Ulrich Obrist & Thomas Demand: The Conversation Series