Introduction

Acclaimed Berlin-based artist Thomas Demand has created a carefully crafted body of work using the tools of photography to create a stark and eerie world of almost real-looking, but thoroughly imagined and constructed environments and situations. His seemingly clean and unassuming, un-rhetorical images are the result of a sophisticated process of mimicking ordinary normality and sheer banality. Thomas Demand's seemingly unproblematic, light-footed and unobtrusive photographs deal with a deep problem of perception and understanding. His work draws out archetypal settings and places of today, including critical figures and models of the standard and iconic routines of contemporary life, of ordinary urban living and daily office work, of factory work and hotel or apartment life, of travel and science, and of politics and lifestyle.

On view will be Refuge (I to V), a recent series of works from 2021 that deals with the description of potential places of refuge, places of apparent safety and protection that at the same time show loneliness, alienation and fear. The exhibition will also feature the complementary video Camera from 2007 (duration, 140 min).

Prior to the opening on December 15, an artist talk with Thomas Demand was moderated by Erwin Kessler at MARe/Museum of Recent Art, Bucharest, presenting to the public the artistic, technical and conceptual stakes of Thomas Demand and an overview of the evolution of his artistic practice.