Thomas Demand
Gate, 2004

Artist
Thomas Demand

Title
Gate

Year of creation
2004

Technology and dimensions
C-Print/Diasec, Edition 5/6

Year of acquisition
2005

The work “Gate” was acquired by Thomas Demand. His works revolve around the question of the boundary between simulation and reality; they are reproductions of reproductions that are based on a reversal of the photographic process. Since 1993, Demand has been building elaborate model backdrops of rooms and landscapes out of cardboard and paper based on a photo template from his large arsenal of media photos and photographing them once, then destroying the model. On the one hand, he is privatizing the public world of images; on the other hand, the photographs are images that are about images. Demand's works are an attempt to dismantle images that shape our consciousness, that are stored in our memories, that are often somewhere between remembering and forgetting. "Gate" shows the security gate at the airport through which the attacker Mohammed Atta passed undetected on September 11, 2001 and changed the world. This lock has certainly been frequently reproduced in the media, but it is not immediately remembered. Other images of September 11th are much more contemporary. In this way, Demand also plays with the uncertainties of remembering. They are speculations about how vision works.

Britta Schmitz