Introduction

Thomas Demand presents Mundo de Papel at Centro Botín, Santander. The exhibition is conceived as an installation combining photographs not previously shown and others selected by the artist and Udo Kittelmann, curator of the exhibition.

For Mundo de Papel, Demand has designed an entire simulated urban landscape, composed of eight pavilions surrounded by wallpaper installations. Each pavilion hangs from the ceiling and serves as a display for his photographs and video works dating from 1996 to the most recent from 2021.

Subjects include Whitney Houston’s last meal at the Beverly Hilton Hotel; the control room at Fukushima’s nuclear power plant; the recent Diamond Princess cruise ship stuck in quarantine; a pond with waterlilies like an impressionist painting; a red bow glowing in the sun or discarded plastic cups stuck on a mesh fence. Each scene is reconstructed with paper and cardboard using intricate folding and cutting techniques. After the model is built, he photographs them and discards the objects he created leaving only a visual narrative.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a unique pop-up book including an essay by Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa and with three-dimensional representations of the pavilions, produced by Thomas Demand and co-edited in collaboration with Fundación Botín and London-based publishers Mack Books. Demand will lead a special workshop in Santander during the exhibition.

For any press inquiries for Fundación Botín, please contact María Cagigas Gandarillas: 
mcagigas@fundacionbotin.org