narrow road to the interior
susanne bruegger, thomas demand, heidi specker
Thomas Demand is the sort of artist to be seen in glossy publications that herald 'artists of the new millennium' or 'twenty-first century painting techniques'. In such books, the artist is usually designated four pages, and represented by his/her most popular works and a cursory biography. While it would undoubtedly be a thrill for any artist to be included in such a production, it is all too easy for the reader to put the book back on the coffee table and assume knowledge of the artist's work. It is a process of learning akin to the way modernism was received in Australia, when artists had to rely on grainy reproductions from Europe.
As a result of such deficiencies in my learning, I had previously assumed that the essence of Thomas Demand's work was a formal delight in the depiction of banal architectural scenes made from cardboard. In fact, his method involves a circular journey which explores the nature of history and the possibility of its erasure. The artist begins with a photograph of a specifically chosen scene. In one case, the setting is the student office of Bill Gates. In another, he chose a widely publicised photograph of a bathroom in which a German politician was murdered. Each artwork is drawn from an historically loaded image, and re-configured in a way that denies any indication of its origin.
Following the cardboard construction based on the photograph, Demand then photographs the sculpture. He then destroys the sculpture, and finally exhibits the remaining photograph of the sculpture. The viewer is left with a brightly lit, hyper-real scene which could be mistaken for an interior designer's model. The erasure of any text or