Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)
Thomas Demand
Saturday 19 May–Sunday 8 July 2012
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Thomas Demand. This exhibition will be the first in a Japanese museum to present a comprehensive view of Demand's activities, from his early works to his recent film pieces as well as his well-known pieces such as Bathroom (1997) and Grotto (2006). Thomas Demand (born 1964) is one of the leading figures on the German contemporary art scene. He is famous for recreating a scene himself then photographing this to produce carefully constructed pictures. Demand often recreates scenes of political or social events made of paper life-sized models, based on photographs from mass media, then photographs the result. He cuts common images out of ordinary daily life—a bathroom with a glimpse of the bathtub, and a sink full of unwashed dishes, which, at first glance, could almost be mistaken for the real thing, but closer inspection reveals that the space contains an unnaturally uniform texture, producing a strange feeling of wrongness. Significant places, psychological landscapes set against everyday backgrounds; Demand quietly confronts us with these in a thrilling fashion.
