Presidency IThomas Demand is from Munich in 1964 and lives in Berlin. He went to Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1990-1992 and studied under Fritz Schwegler. Hilla and Bernd Becher also taught at this academy. He has also studied at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich from 1987-1990 and following Kunstankademie Dusseldorf he studied at Goldsmith Collge in London from 1993-1994. Demand is also represented by three galleries in New York, Berlin, London and Tokyo.
I have chosen Thomas Demand to study (and admire) because he makes work that is based on reality yet it is a trick to the viewers.
[Demand] begins with an image, usually although not exclusively, taken from a photograph culled from the media, which he reinterprets into a three-dimensional life-size model made from coloured card and paper. These models are photographed with a large-format-camera and the resulting photographs displayed unframed behind Plexiglas. Once they have been photographed the models are destroyed. - photocabin(e)
Since the models are destroyed and all that is the photograph questions reality. You have the actual event that was captured and sent to press from the media. The bias of the original photographer is questioned. Then when Demand recreates that image with paper he is also putting his own ideas into the image. But what are we as viewers supposed to believe? Photography as a medium in itself is a way of transcribing reality. A way of reproducing the world as we see it. Demand's work this way, questions reality and truth. As viewers of photography are we always questioning what is real? That is a long winded reason why I have chosen Thomas Demand but in my work I also like to question reality and use the history of photography against itself to complicate the images.
“Demand knowingly uses the traditional role of photography as a faithful transcriber of the world to throw his subject’s artificiality into doubt. This confounding of references is such that the very idea of an original recedes completely. “
-Carnegie International, http://www.cmoa.org/international/html/art/demand.htm
“I’m combining a painter’s and sculptor’s concerns in a third medium photography”.
-Thomas Demand, http://e-mage.blogspot.com/2005/05/press-release-thomas-demand-private.html
Photos:
Clearing 
Bathroom
Website: http://www.thomasdemand.de/
Galleries:
http://www.takaishiigallery.com/en/artists/thomas-demand/bibliography.html
http://www.matthewmarks.com/artists/thomas-demand/biography/
http://www.estherschipper.com/
http://spruethmagers.com/artists/thomas_demand@@57
Link to interview:
http://artkrush.com/116953.html
Sites I referenced:
http://www.cmoa.org/international/html/art/demand.htm
http://e-mage.blogspot.com/2005/05/press-release-thomas-demand-private.html
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