thomas demand: paper and cardboard sculptures

the artist (born in munich in 1962) often culls his subjects from reports in the
mass media, using them as the starting point to create expansive sculptures
out of paper and cardboard which transpose the two-dimensional original into
three-dimensional form. the artist then photographs these spatial (re)constructions
made out of paper with a large format camera, before ultimately destroying them.
direct human activity, finer details and figures captured on film are not transferred from
the original photographs into the life-size sculptures. what remains are phantom images
of ‘crime scenes’ of missing events which often appear just as familiar to us as they are
impalpable. accompanying the works in the exhibition are picture commentaries by botho
strauß, created especially for the show which,rather than trying to give straightforward
explanations of the works, open them up to new ways of interpretation as textual pieces
in their own right.