Settings: Artist Research- Thomas Demand

Thomas Demand
Büro (Office)
1996
Colour Print - Diasex perspex
183.5 x 20 cm

Photo sourced from Thomas Demand

Thomas Demand creates scenes from paper and photographs them, giving the viewer a deceptive idea of reality. When I look at these photographs I have two contrasting ideas, that the photos look convincingly real, or that the seem strangely artificial. He is recreating an image into a scene which then becomes an image in itself. It gives the sense that the work exists in a realm that I am not apart of 

I like the fact that the materials of this work are listed as being a photograph print, as if the artist only wanted the work to exist in the frame of the photograph. This gives his work a very ephemeral quality and sense of temperance. I can relate to this idea when thinking about the work that we are planning for the Settings installation. The work will exist in the space for only a short time and would then exist only in documentation form. I am drawn to the way that Demand has created the entire scene out of paper, he is forcing the viewer to question what they are seeing when they look at the photograph. In a sense, the space that he is showing is completely constructed by himself, giving him the power to destroy it as he pleases.

The work is interesting in the way that the artist has taken an object, paper, and created forms from it that are not generally linked to it. The paper is thus given a new life, it can be seen as a form of construction to create something that appears to be not only solid, but permanent in the sense that it will exist in the photograph forever. The work forces the viewer to challenge what they are seeing rather than simply taking it for face value. I think this is an important thing to be aware of when we are creating our own installation for the Settings project as we want the viewer to look at something and be open to the idea that it may be different to what they had originally perceived it to be.