Vorhang / Curtain

Thomas Demand’s work exists at the intersection of installation and photography, conceptualism and scenography. Early in his career he used photography to document elaborate, life-size installations created from cardboard cutouts of real locations. Ultimately, the photo documentations are all that remain of those environments. In 2009, Demand called on his long-time collaborators, architects Caruso St John, to design his exhibition at the Mies van der Rohe designed Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Instead of erecting walls to serve as a backdrop for the artworks and to divide the open space, Demand and the architects used curtains, a nod to Lilly Reich, a designer who was a collaborator of van der Rohe’s. Later, when Demand was invited to restage the show at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam , he redesigned the exhibition for the new setting, including the transformation of the curtains into a two-dimensional wallpaper piece. The photograph Vorhang / Curtain is characteristic of both Demand’s transformation of interior spaces as well as his recreation of past events or locations.