Until May 28th, the Jeu de Paume presents the first retrospective in France, of Thomas Demand. Entitled: Le bégaiement de l’histoire(The stuttering of history) which brings together around 70 works (photographs, films and wallpapers), that covers the major aspects of Demand’s work. Unfolding in four parts – Disturbing Stories, The Mysteries of Daily Life, The Architectonic Drive and Moving Images – the exhibition aims to present the artist’s vision of the world, an invitation to question the historical events that we consume through the filter of images.
About his practice, Thomas Demand says: “I imagine that basically it is about transforming the world into a model, recreating it and stripping it of its anecdotal part. So it becomes allegory, and the project metaphor. Making models is a cultural technique without which we would be blind.” It is perhaps for this reason that, moving away from the sculptural reconstruction of already existing images of the world, he chose, during his residency at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, in 2011, to take a direct interest to the preparatory paper models produced by architects and fashion designers. Whether they present, without the slightest modification, fragmentary views of the frail models, whose astonishing provisional character, designed by a mid-century architect, John Lautner, and by the contemporary agency SANAA, or whether they show us the radicalism of the patterns created by stylist Azzedine Alaïa, Model Studies reveal that the world around us is based on paper
MACK editions published the catalog / book accompanying Thomas Demand’s exhibition.
Thomas Demand : Le bégaiement de l’histoire
Until May 28, 2023
Jeu de Paume
1 Pl. de la Concorde
75008 Paris, France
www.jeudepaume.org
