Megan and Murray McMillan

[detail]

[detail]

Thomas Demand’s installational photo show at the Hamburger Kunsthalle is at the front guard of conceptual photography. Steeped in scholarship and narrative — Demand has re-created the site of the burglary in the Embassy of Niger in Rome from which the stationary paper was stolen that then was used for forged contracts which the US intelligence services used as evidence to support the invasion of Iraq — Demand’s video and photos are still decadently visual. In his trademark trompe l’oeil of Office-Depot stylized empty rooms constructed entirely out of paper and cardboard, painstakingly photographed, Demand damningly shows this house of cards that was the catalyst for a senseless war.

Thomas Demand. Camera
4 April to 6 July 2008
Hamburger Kunsthalle
Hamburg, Germany