Thomas Demand. Mirror Without Memory

Artist Thomas Demand talks about some of the works featured in his solo exhibition at Garage and explains the meaning of the title of the show, Mirror Without Memory.

In the video, Demand reveals why the figure of Edward Snowden, whose story of staying in Sheremetyevo Airport transit zone formed the core of the Shelter series, is important to him. Referencing the Nagelhaus installation, the artist reflects on how individual will can oppose that of society and, speaking of Studio, Demand explains how he discovered a connection between his own artistic practice and the work of Henri Matisse. He also reveals what inspired the work Princess.

A graduate of the Düsseldorf Art Academy and a sculptor by training, Thomas Demand has gone down in the history of contemporary art as the artist who revived photography as a self-sufficient and living medium that is able to capture complex states of reality (social, political, natural or personal), balancing on the border of the fictitious and the seemingly truthful. Borrowing images from the press and using technical footage from events, Demand reproduces these scenes in real scale from cardboard and paper, making sculptures that he photographs and subsequently destroys.

Mirror Without Memory was on show at Garage September 10, 2021–January 30, 2022.