Thomas Demand In Conversation With Sylvia Lavin
Thomas Demand provided an interesting view on the importance of architecture and how it has shaped his art making practice. The destruction of models and how architects handled the models of failed works was interesting in that most architects kept a hold of the models and left the„ often having rooms and rooms filled with past works. Some burned there’s which comes to the point of how paper was used. It was an interesting take on how paper, such a simple medium, could be taken advantage of, and how important of a medium it was for Thomas, how much he admired this medium and used it to its full extent. He elaborated that paper had a certain aesthetic beauty because of its pure simplicity and the way in which it was ubiquitous everywhere in the world.
Taking a look at his practice really interested me in the sense that he had immaculate attention to detail to the most tiniest of things. When preparing his hotel rooms where he wanted to make the private become public, every little thing, from how the room felt, to the scratches on the door had to be just right to his tastes. The smell of the room also had to be just right.
Musty and old was the smell Demand wanted to attain in his rooms but the rooms present were too musty and old. The new Prada store was in view of the building so he wanted them to make the room smell of Prada which involved spraying Prada perfume around the room. It was interesting to find how he defined the ‘smell of Prada’. To me personally, the smell of Prada would have been something more like quality tanned leather and the smell of the ‘factory’ a sort of artificial smell, rather than the smooth smell of Prada perfume.
