Thomas Demand's National Gallery: Archetypes of German History at Neue Nationalgalerie

Thomas Demand's exhibition at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (18 September 2009 – 17 January 2010) presents around forty photographs of his meticulously crafted paper and cardboard models, which he destroys after shooting. The selection focuses on images referencing 20th-century German history: the former Bundestag in Bonn, a TV studio, a facade in East Berlin, the artist's childhood room, and a table with explosives for the Red Army Faction. Demand creates archetypal 'clichés' of German identity, blending everyday scenes (a public building staircase) with historical traces (vandalized Stasi offices). The show coincides with celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall, highlighting the banal and depressing aspects of postwar German life—gray discretion and abstraction. London architects Caruso St. John designed the installation, building walls with heavy drapes (a nod to Lilly Reich) to create 19th-century museum-like backdrops for the floating photographs, solving the challenge of Mies van der Rohe's glass pavilion. The result is a rare perfection of precise selection, faux-historical ambiance, and the sad beauty of German everyday.