Thomas Demand - 2 Vols. Processo Grottesco. Yellowcake

This elegant, boxed set introduces two new works by Thomas Demand, both presented during the 2007 Venice Biennale. The first volume presents “Processo Grottesco,” a life-sized paper model of a grotto--complete with stalagmites and stalactites--that was exhibited along with other source materials and Demand’s final photographic images. With a section of its pages cut in two, so that one can flip through old cave postcards on top or details of the finished artwork on the bottom, this volume contains rich, exhaustive documentation of the project, including historical documents, working drawings, models in progress, close-up details and final artworks, as well as an essay by Germano Celant. The second, slimmer, silver-edged volume presents the Yellowcake photographs, which portray the Nigerian Embassy in Rome--famous for “sparking” the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq. It includes essays by Robert Storr and Alex Farquharson, as well as a summary of “Nigergate” by investigative journalist Carlo Bonini.

Thomas Demand was born in Munich in 1964. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Munich, the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, the Cite des Arts, Paris, and Goldsmiths College, London. Demand begins by translating a preexisting image, usually culled from the media, into a life-size model he makes out of colored paper and cardboard. He recreates a room, a parking lot, a staircase, a landscape--then he photographs the model and destroys it. Demand's photographs appear at once compellingly real and strangely artificial. Since their subjects--handcrafted facsimiles of both architectural spaces and natural environments--are themselves built in the image of other images, the photographs are three times removed from the scenes they seek to depict. Combining craftsmanship and conceptualism in equal parts, Demand pushes the medium of photography toward uncharted frontiers.

Germano Celant is Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim Museum. He has published extensively on Robert Mapplethorpe and the rich art historical past referenced in the photographeris work.

Robert Storr is a curator, artist and critic who is the Dean of the Art School at Yale University. Among his many books is Modern Despite Modernism.