Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Thomas Demand, the next exhibition in his gallery at 523 West 24th Street. The exhibition features seven new photographs in an installation specially designed by the artist.

Thomas Demand is best known for his photographs of paper and cardboard constructions, meticulously made by hand in the artist’s studio, and based on images taken from the media or everyday scenes that capture his attention. The resulting images are not edited or altered, their vibrant color and dramatic compositions entirely dependent on the staging and lighting of the paper models in the studio.

The new photographs on view include Melonen/Melons (2025), which is based on a press image taken on the US-Mexico border of a shipment of fake watermelons containing methamphetamine and also recalls Henri Matisse’s painting The Moroccans (1915–16). Eis (2025), depicting an expansive iceberg, is the most recent of Demand’s topological studies, which include his seminal works Grotto (2006) and Pond (2020).

The installation features a new wallpaper, Fels (2025), that presents an all-over image of crumpled paper. Like Demand’s photographs, the wallpaper is based on a monumental paper model, and it alludes to the cracked and crumbling walls of a cave. “My process makes the distance between reality and interpretation very clear,” Demand says. “My work is more like fictional writing than being matter of fact.”

Thomas Demand (b. 1964) lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles. He has had one-person exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. He represented Germany at the 2004 São Paulo Biennial. The retrospective “A Stutter of History” is currently on view at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and was previously presented at the UCCA Edge in Shanghai, Jeu de Paume in Paris, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Thomas Demand is on view at 523 West 24th Street from May 9 to June 28, 2025, Tuesday through Saturday, from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

For additional information please call 212-243-0200 or email inquiries@matthewmarks.com.

Press Release

Artist Page