Thomas Demand

Tavern

2006

Not on display

Artist: Thomas Demand born 1964
Original title: Klause
Medium: 5 photographs, C-print on paper, face-mounted to acrylic glass, mounted on aluminium
Dimensions: Image (Tavern 1 Klause 1): 2751 x 1701 mm
image (Tavern 2 Klause 2): 1780 x 2440 mm
image (Tavern 3 Klause 3): 1986 x 2580 mm
image (Tavern 4 Klause 4): 1030 x 680 mm
image (Tavern 5 Klause 5): 1970 x 1370 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Tate International Council 2007
Reference: P79234

Display caption

Demand’s work is based on pre-existing images from the media, often of sites of political or cultural interest. He translates these images into life-size models using paper and cardboard, and photographs the resulting tableaux. These five photographs depict a tavern in the German village of Burbach where a young boy was kidnapped, held hostage and ultimately murdered in 2001. His body was never recovered. The case was covered extensively in the German press, and images of the tavern became imbued with the public’s horrified imagination of the crime. Demand’s photographs investigate the traces these mediated images leave in the collective memory.

Gallery label, April 2008

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