The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) presents Ta solo exhibition by Thomas Demand, on view 19 May– 8 July 2012. This exhibition will be the first in a Japanese museum to present a comprehensive view of Demand’s activities, from his early works to his recent film pieces as well as his well-known pieces such as Bathroom (1997) and Grotto (2006).
Thomas Demand, Kontrollraum / Control Room, 2011. C-print. © Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / APG-JAA, Tokyo. Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London and PKM Gallery, Seoul.
Thomas Demand (born 1964) is one of the leading figures on the German contemporary art scene. He is famous for recreating a scene himself then photographing this to produce carefully constructed pictures. Demand often recreates scenes of political or social events made of paper life-sized models, based on photographs from mass media, then photographs the result. He cuts common images out of ordinary daily life—a bathroom with a glimpse of the bathtub, and a sink full of unwashed dishes, which, at first glance, could almost be mistaken for the real thing, but closer inspection reveals that the space contains an unnaturally uniform texture, producing a strange feeling of wrongness. Significant places, psychological landscapes set against everyday backgrounds; Demand quietly confronts us with these in a thrilling fashion.
The exhibition will present approximately 30 works including a new film, Pacific Sun (2012), which will mark its premiere in a public museum. One of the highlights will be Control Room (2011), which is an image of the central control room of the Fukushima Daiichi atomic power plant after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 of last year. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition will contain an essay by an internationally renowned German film director, Alexander Kluge, and a conversation between the artist and a distinguished Japanese writer, Yoko Tawada, who lives in Berlin.
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)
4-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto-ku
Tokyo 135-0022 Japan
www.mot-art-museum.jp