thomas demand, house of card

"House of Card" is a retrospective exhibition of the work of German artist Thomas Demand. The title alludes to the precarious nature of Demand's practice as a builder. While architecture is usually associated with durability, Demand explores the limits of the fragile and ephemeral, as in his use of paper and cardboard.

In the Model Studies series, Demand departs from his usual practice.Thus, for the first time, he does not photograph the models he has built himself, but looks at those of other artists and (fashion) designers.He therefore photographed the patterns used by the couturier Azzedine Alaïa to prepare his cuts.

Alaïa was often referred to as the engineer or architect of fabric and was known for his relentless pursuit of perfection. Sometimes he would work for five years on the pattern of a jacket, and as soon as the garment was shown at a fashion show, he would bring it back to his workshop to rework it again.His technical talent was equal to that of great masters such as Balenciaga or Madame Grès, whose prototypes he collected and sometimes took apart in order to imitate them or, on the contrary, to adapt them. Immortalized by Demand, the instructions, measurements, dots...are relics of an intense work process. The patterns are shown as ready-mades or found objects from another artist's practice, and as frozen in their process of formation.