It's no secret that contemporary photography has played an increasingly central role in the art world within recent years. Many art historians--such as Michael Fried--believe the emergence of tableau-sized photographs to be "one of the most important developments in the so called visual arts of the past twenty plus years" (for more reading on that, I recommend his book Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before). The auction price of contemporary photography now rivals easel painting and the demand for Demand reflects this change in taste.
In addition to the art market change, the way in which people view photography has also changed--photographs now exist in a post-photoshop culture. People question the content of photos much more now than ever before in history. Ask anyone to comment on the latest cover of any fashion magazine. She/he is likely to eventually comment on the amount of airbrushing the cover's final result required. Turn back the clock fifty years and the skepticism regarding a magazine's pictorial purity is essentially non-existent.
Back then, photos were assumed to be representations of truth or documentary evidence. Why wouldn't they? Back then photographers were unable to take liberties by way of digital manipulation. Criticism of photography being staged or fake is predominantly a late 20th century observation. Over time however, software like photoshop enabled them to create and distort photos. Contemporary photographers like Demand reacted to this shift by playing with the assumption of a photograph's documentary quality.
Thomas Demand doesn't digitally manipulate the content of his photos, instead he uses subterfuge to trick the viewer into believing what they are seeing is real. Demand is known for taking photographs of three-dimensional, paper models that look like real images of rooms. These rooms are often recreations of historical places loaded with social and political meaning. In the Dailies Demand's MO stays the same while his motifs and materials change. Typically forgotten objects such as a clothesline, a saucer, construction site materials on the street, or a children's footstool (below) are made into faux models. The models are then photographed using extremely rare color print film. Demand is famous for destroying his models after the photograph is finished.
Only upon close inspection is the viewer able to recognize the subtle clues that lead to the photos' inauthentic content. They are meant to compel the viewer to question what they see as reality. What is reality? Does reality even exist or is the world an illusion? A dream? How do we determine what pictorial content is authentic if technology has rendered us incapable of doing so? A reading of this work would typically end here if these photographs were hanging in a gallery or museum, but Demand's specificity in choosing a location lends his work to new interpretations.
Today's art exhibitions are no longer limited to small white cubes filled with paintings and sculpture. The fear of distracting the viewer from the artwork is all but eradicated. Instead, viewers are invited to spaces that play into the reading of the artwork itself. For example, when Jeff Koons' exhibited his sculptures at Versailles in 2008 (the Château's first art exhibition), the art and it's setting were indistinguishable. One couldn't help but consider the interplay between the opulence of Versailles and the colorful optimism of Koons' sculpture. Their lavish, coloristic style complimented each other and simultaneously added another symbolic layer to the exhibition, the most obvious being the parallels between the current US economic climate and the French Revolution.
In the midst of Louis XIV's rococo decadence and Koons' post-modern frivolity lies a darker subtext. Versailles is definitely one of the most beautiful palaces in all of France; however it's also the site of catastrophic social tension due to the French aristocracy's dismissive reply to the cries for help from the impoverished lower class. By displaying his notoriously expensive and gaudy sculptures at Versailles, Jeff Koons manipulates the context in which the art is shown and in doing so, castes light upon current social problems that are analogous to previous historical events. One of these social issues being the increasing isolation of the upper and lower classes in America. It is this type of recurring social phenomenon, this polarity, that led to eventual revolt from the masses and the 1789 French Revolution (for further reading on the isolation of the American upper and lower classes, I recommend Charles Murray's Coming Apart)
Just as Versailles impacted the historic and symbolic interpretations of Koons' 17 sculptures, the meaning of Demand's photographs change when one considers the location they are exhibited. I propose that the artist may have intended for the Commercial Traveler's Association to play a role in the artwork itself. After all, Demand describes himself not as a photographer, but as a conceptual artist for whom photography is an intrinsic part of his creative process. So why this space?
The Commercial Traveler's Association (seen above) is an odd place to run an exhibition. The building sits in the middle of Martin Place, a community square in the heart of Sydney, surrounded by skyscrapers, high-end boutiques, and neoclassical banks. It was created by the famous Australian modernist architect, Harry Seidler in the mid 1970s and is used to accommodate traveling retailers and businessmen visiting/working in the area.
Yet despite its standing as a historic building and its peculiar appearance (Frank Lloyd Wright meets Mies van der Rohe?), most Sydney locals don't know the building's history or function. Most pass it by as if it doesn't exist. This idea of being unknown or forgotten must have intrigued Thomas Demand, after all, the objects and spaces in his photos are all depictions of lost memories, the things we ignore.
The building has a futuristic style and function-based format. I've heard it's exterior be described as a stylized mushroom, a space ship, and (my favorite) the house of the Wizard of Aus. It has a tubular stem that clouds at the top to make room for the commuter bedrooms. Two strips of long, horizontal black windows surround the upper level allowing lots of natural light. It's a fabulous example of modernist architecture in Sydney.
It's interior is purely utilitarian. When I visited The Dailies exhibition, I walked up a spiral staircase, through the building's stem. At the top, I came to a curved corridor that ran the circumference of the upper layer. The hallway was lined with doors that led into small rooms, each complete with a bed, a desk, mini-fridge, vanity, window, and upside-down water glasses on paper doilies. Everything one needs to live... simplistically modern. Demand hung one photograph above the bed in each of the facility's 15 rooms. Small segments of a larger short story were written on laminated note cards and set upright against the vanity's mirror in each room out of chronological order.
Upon entering each room, I felt a sense of sterility that was juxtaposed by the busy city streets visible through the windows. The beds were perfectly made, the floor was spotless, the rooms were claustrophobic. The short story segments referenced objects that were visible from the window's view such as telephone wires, tree leaves, and city streets. The story was loosely based on the artist's time in Sydney, what he observed, what he did, and how he thought about the room. The writing was surprisingly nostalgic. It was the only thing imbued with emotional content in the room.
One card stood out to me. It described the rooms as a space modules, and compared the building to a space station. Indeed, the room was lifeless enough to transcend time and space. There was something austere and uncanny about its perfection. The living spaces were so lifeless, I felt as if I was intruding. What was it about the room that made me feel this way?
Most of the other visitors focused on Demand's photographs--not surprising considering those are the pieces he is famous for. But there was something bigger here, something I think most people overlooked. The context of the room and the building were impacting the way in which I read the photographs. I felt as if the photographs were an extension of the staged environment, merely props. They perpetuated that same sense of static neurosis. Small, incidental subjects from life, as if you had seen and forgotten them immediately. Why place value on these banal things?
I suspect one reason may be to remember them somehow, as if these were precious images of a time now gone. I contend that Demand's rooms were suspended in time in a post-apocalyptic realm. I believe he wanted the viewer to transcend time and inhabit a space where our current everyday occurrences are valued and cherished. This is a Realist reading from a 22nd century perspective. The artist is trying to make everyday motifs appear sentimental. One can imagine Demand's models acting as makeshift realities, a desperate attempt to remember a life of the past, a life now gone. This is the artist's created reality, his way of expressing his desire to go back to a simpler time.
I believe the above interpretation answers many of the questions I had regarding Demand's work. (1) It explains why Demand decided to change the subject matter in his photographs. He wanted the viewer to feel as if they were in one of his paper models from previous work--bereft of human life, but full of historical and symbolic significance. This signifies a development in Demand's work, as if he wants to impose upon the viewer a more immediate interaction with his created reality. (2) It explains why he went to great lengths to find the perfect building that would fulfill his vision. From the outside, the Commercial Traveler's Association looks like a building of the future; on the inside, it resembles a utilitarian bunker. (3) This exhibition also recalls the artist's background in sculpture. Ostensibly, I'm suggesting that The Dailies is a series of installations instead of a series of photographs--that the art encompasses the entire building, as if it were a found object. (4) As an overarching theme, The Dailies represents the ephemeral nature of life as we know it. This message is echoed in many other elements within Thomas Demand's work even down to his materials (the film Demand uses is going extinct).
It appears that contemporary artists are using their environments to play a role in their work so that art and exhibition inevitably become indistinguishable. I think Thomas Demand represents this type of art making and exhibiting. He has the ability to use the exhibition site as an extension of the artwork, but I'm also interested in the viewer's role. Next time I'll be discussing participatory art and it's impact on contemporary art exhibitions and its greater symbolic significance.
