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Lot Essay
'The concept of constructing a reality in the studio is much stronger than faking things for the camera. They are genuine sculptures, documented. I make my decisions about objects first, the second step is to photograph them.' (The artist quoted in 'Vik Muniz/Thomas Demand, A Conversation', in Thomas Demand, Freiburg in Marienbad 1998, p. 44).
Stall/Stable is a work emblematic of Demand's approach to his sculptural and photographic processes. Since the 1980s, Demand has been preoccupied with the process of constructing replicas of objects and environments in his studio and subsequently photographing them. Often crafting these entities out of completely non-functional materials - such as a refrigerator out of cardboard or curtain blinds out of paper - Demand is a skillful master of mimicry and illusions. For Stall/Stable, Demand has reconstructed a setting full of disheveled hay. Made out of paper and cardboard, its colour, surface texture and weight all mirror dried grass faithfully in every way. Yet, from this seemingly simple concept, a multi-layered reading of Demand's work can be derived.
His masterful imitation of the hay nods to traditional Renaissance art forms in art history where achieving the exact representation of the original subject was championed, such as Michaelangelo's sculpture of David. Moreover, his productions of banal objects from everyday life echoes the Duchampian discussion on ready-made objects. While his sculptures resemble found objects, the painstaking process of making them is subversive of the ready-made discourse. Most interestingly, Demand's photographic documentation of the haystack negotiates Walter Benjamin's famous essay in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in 1935. It stirs the viewer to consider the notion of authenticity and the 'aura' of the art object-first put forth by Benjamin--where it is reproduced and removed from its cultural, historical and political setting, and is 'reactivated' in a new environment. In all these ways, Stall/Stable resonates with different potent artistic discussions, and together with his contemporaries such as Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer and Bernd and Hilla Becher, Demand provides radical interpretations of and insight into the role of photography in the landscape of contemporary art.
Stall/Stable is a work emblematic of Demand's approach to his sculptural and photographic processes. Since the 1980s, Demand has been preoccupied with the process of constructing replicas of objects and environments in his studio and subsequently photographing them. Often crafting these entities out of completely non-functional materials - such as a refrigerator out of cardboard or curtain blinds out of paper - Demand is a skillful master of mimicry and illusions. For Stall/Stable, Demand has reconstructed a setting full of disheveled hay. Made out of paper and cardboard, its colour, surface texture and weight all mirror dried grass faithfully in every way. Yet, from this seemingly simple concept, a multi-layered reading of Demand's work can be derived.
His masterful imitation of the hay nods to traditional Renaissance art forms in art history where achieving the exact representation of the original subject was championed, such as Michaelangelo's sculpture of David. Moreover, his productions of banal objects from everyday life echoes the Duchampian discussion on ready-made objects. While his sculptures resemble found objects, the painstaking process of making them is subversive of the ready-made discourse. Most interestingly, Demand's photographic documentation of the haystack negotiates Walter Benjamin's famous essay in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in 1935. It stirs the viewer to consider the notion of authenticity and the 'aura' of the art object-first put forth by Benjamin--where it is reproduced and removed from its cultural, historical and political setting, and is 'reactivated' in a new environment. In all these ways, Stall/Stable resonates with different potent artistic discussions, and together with his contemporaries such as Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer and Bernd and Hilla Becher, Demand provides radical interpretations of and insight into the role of photography in the landscape of contemporary art.