Thomas Demand, (born 1964 in Munich, Germany) is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg.

He invites us to question the reality of what we are looking at—not just in his photographs, but in everyday life as well. At first glance, his images appear to be photographic records of “real” and oddly familiar places. Then the viewer realises that they are looking at something entirely artificial. It is this sudden realisation that something so apparently real that gives Demand’s work its undeniable psychological impact

His art-making process begins with selecting photographic images from the mass media, often of rooms or spaces that are politically or historically charged (for example, the kitchen in Saddam Hussein’s hideaway in Tikrit, Iraq).

Trained as a sculptor, Demand then creates life-size replicas of the chosen image using colored paper and cardboard. But he strips his creations of the detail, frames of reference (and of any people) that would create a specific context; Saddam’s kitchen, for instance, could be almost anyone’s.

The next step is to photograph the tableaux.

Then, finally, he destroys his constructions.

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