Vincent Borrelli, Bookseller

Publisher: London: MACK, 2018
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781910164907
Condition: New / No dust jacket as issued
Item #: 113416

$1,100.00

Specifics

Price is net to all; promotional discounts do not apply.

EDITION PRICE: Price to increase as edition sells out.

SHIPPING NOTE: Due to size and weight, additional shipping fees apply (calculated at checkout).

Special Limited Edition of 60 copies, with one numbered print (paper size approximately 11 x 9 inches; image size approximately 10 x 7-1/2 inches; printed on 500gr Hahnemuehle Hot Press paper) contained within a signed copy of the book in a slipcase.

ABOUT THE BOOK: First Edition, First Printing. Hardbound. Signed in black marker on the title page by Demand. Photographically-illustrated paper-covered boards, with title debossed on spine, in photographically-illustrated slipcase with title printed in gray on side. Photographs by Thomas Demand. Interview with Demand by Russell Ferguson. Many texts by other contributors including Teju Cole, Hal Foster, and Jeff Wall. Edited by Christy Lange. Design by Naomi Mizusaki, Supermarket. 504 pp., with color plates throughout. 12 x 10 inches.

Condition

New.

Description

Thomas Demand is one of the most important and relevant contemporary artists working today. Demand's starting point is usually an image culled from the mass media, off the Internet, or a low-resolution image discovered in a newspaper or other source during his research. Oftentimes, the picture has become iconic or representative in some way of an important historical, political or cultural event. He then painstakingly creates by hand, over the course of weeks or even months, a full-size (1:1) sculptural model from colored paper and cardboard. The paper model, in which he deliberately excludes certain specific details, and emphasizes various elements and graphic forms important to the original source image, is then photographed by Demand. This photograph is the final work of art and the paper-model is then destroyed and recycled ("Grotte / Grotto, 2006" is the only existing original paper sculpture).

Demand's large-scale photographs deal with our relationship to media in general, and photography in particular. The confluence of memory, individual interpretations and readings, collective meanings associated with significant events, are all examined. His process -- from source material and research, to the meticulous sculptural interpretation, to the final photographic work -- adds to his multi-layered examination of visual representation, as well as the problematic "indexical" nature of photography.

If one strips away specificity, if the details that allow us to "read" a photograph are reduced to generic bits of unremarkable paper, is the result a denial of what photography intends? If the photograph exists to let us know who we are in space, allows us to decode the details, the light, the "specifics," then Demand turns our perceptions into chaos. In his work, Demand uses sites of historical significance -- visual sites -- and recreates them in painstaking full-size scale models using cardboard and paper. The authenticity of the historical event is suggested, through titles, yet the images are stark and lifeless as enormous vacuums of energy and perception. They are intentionally blank and soul-less, so as to capture the inadequacy of photography's ability to really "capture" historical events.

From the publisher: "The Complete Papers is an extensive volume encompassing all of Thomas Demand’s work over the past 28 years, together with the primary texts written about his practice. The book includes previously unseen early works from 1990, together with reference reproductions on every one of his pieces. A newly commissioned interview with Russell Ferguson, new texts by Jeff Wall and Alexander Kluge, contributions by Parveen Adams, Francesco Bonami, Teju Cole, Beatriz Colomina, Jeffrey Eugenides, Julia Franck, Hal Foster, Rachel Kushner, Ben Lerner, Jacques Rancière, Gary Shteyngart, Neville Wakefield, to name a few, is concluded by a complete exhibition listing and bibliography.

This hardback volume, housed in a printed and embossed slipcase, which also includes a Demand work printed on the interior lining, is the primary authority on the work of one of the most important artists of the 21st century."

From Collector Daily, by By Loring Knoblauch (June 6, 2019): “…This is the kind of authoritative, statement book that will undoubtedly change some people’s minds about Demand and his ultimate importance. In its own structured and methodical way, it demystifies some of the dryness that can make Demand’s photographs less than entirely approachable and subtly creates frameworks and through lines that summarize the refrains and unique points in his deliberate artistic progression. With this excellent catalogue raisonné, Demand has both cemented his position as a master of the made-to-be-photographed, and clarified why he took this unconventional road in the first place.”