Das Spiel mit der Erinnerung - Die Bilderwelt des Künstlers Thomas Demand

06
MEMORY ON DISPLAY
The Paper Illusions of THOMAS DEMAND
Clearing
they number 4,948. The song, »The Good
Com rade«, could be heard once again at noon
throughout the entire town – with a favorable
wind up to ten kilometers away. The booming
notes could even be heard on the top of the
»Wilden Kaisers«. With his art, Thomas Demand
restored the `heroic organ´ for the public
memory.
Demand also has quite a sense of humor – as
demonstrated in his piece, »Landing« (Landing).
It was inspired by the picture of a mobilephone
photograph, shoot by a museum visitor,
that showed the results from an accident in
the Fitzwilliam Museum of Art and Antiques in
Cambridge, England.
In January 2006, a man stumbled over his shoe
string and fell down some stairs on three 300
year old vases from the Quing Dynasty. All three
vases broke. This mobile phone snapshot of
the bizarre accident quickly found its way to
the Internet and even the museum set up an
extra Internet site about the clean up and the
re sulting restoration process. The accident became
a media coup for the museum. »In April
that same year, the man was officially arrested,
under the suspicion that he had intentionally
tied his shoe strings together to gain attention,«
added Thomas Demand. Incontestably, Demand
has accentuated the comedic side for his reconstruction
of this photograph of the accident.
Even the working title speaks plays with linguistic
slapstick: »Landing« is on the one hand a
common architectural term and at the same
time it describes a bizarre event with a twist on
the meaning of the word.
On the other hand, the objects in »Gate« or
»Kitchen« tell complete dramas: The yellow
telephone next to the safety lock that was not
removed, because the murderer was not recognized;
the matches the fallen tyrant Saddam
Hussein used to warm his coffee in his rabbit
hole while a war raged outside.
The themes Demand has made use of are multilayered,
from an apparently coincidence to
trivial happenings to the unforgettably tragic.
Whether referring to political events or simply
owing to the beauty of nature, all of his artworks
never fail in their effect. He made a name
for himself with an annoying, beautiful forest
we saw in a photograph in which succulent,
deep green leaves were bathed in a bright early
morning light, a forest like the ones French
landscape painters once painted; and ambitious
wildlife journalist loved to portray. The perfect
forest that the Berlin artist pre sented in his five
meter wide monumental photograph, »Clearing«,
was a scenery made from paper that was
created with an very nearly monumental expenditure
of time and energy in his Berlin studio.
His assistants wrapped no less than 270,000
sheets of paper on the artificial branches for
months on end. The sun in this clearing, which
looks more beautiful than any forest imaginable,
shines from his studio lamps.