Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Thomas Demand, the next exhibition in his gallery at 522 West 22nd Street. This will be the artist’s first one-person exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery.

The centerpiece of the exhibition will be a new film, Pacific Sun (2012). Based on a video of a cruise ship caught in a storm between the Republic of Vanuatu and Auckland, New Zealand which the artist found on Youtube, Pacific Sun follows the full narrative arc of the ship’s violent encounter in the Tasman Sea. Seen from the point of view of a security camera in the boat’s café, the film begins with the subtle movement of small items and escalates to a full emergency.

Pacific Sun was filmed over fifteen months, and is the most ambitious undertaking of the artist’s career. The film was made on a full scale set and, like Demand’s models for his photographs, was completely constructed of paper and then destroyed. It comprises a total of 2,400 frames, filmed one at a time, as animators meticulously retraced the movements of each item in the room, shifting the paper models of plates, lemons, pendant lamps, chairs, an upright piano, and a refrigerator by several millimeters at a time.

In addition to the film, Demand will exhibit a group of new photographs that include Control Room (2011), an image of the interior of the Fukushima Daichi power plant after last year’s Tsunami forced its workers to evacuate. This uncanny image shows ceiling panels hanging from rafters and a general state of disorder in a space that would be meticulously kept under normal circumstances. Demand has said of the photograph that it serves as way to recognize the bravery of the individuals who risked their personal safety in order to save others.

Thomas Demand’s work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2005), and the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2009). He has represented Germany at the Bienal de São Paolo (2004), and recently curated the critically acclaimed exhibition “La Carte d’Après Nature,” which premiered at the National Museum of Monaco and traveled to the Matthew Marks Gallery last summer.

Thomas Demand will be on view at the Matthew Marks Gallery at 522 West 22nd Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), from May 4 through June 23, 2012. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

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THOMAS DEMAND

out of print