27.05.2026 – 24.01.2027
Drawing on historical designs for stage sets – from Baroque stage designs to those of the turn of the century – Demand has developed a series of works specifically for the MAK, translating a selection of models from the Vienna Theatre Museum, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and the German Theatre Museum in Munich into the medium of photography. Thinking in terms of models as a cultural practice and its significance for our experience of reality and engagement with the past characterise his entire artistic oeuvre. The photographs on display in the exhibition curated by Bärbel Vischer are the result of an intensive engagement with miniatures of theatre history, which condense space and dramaturgy and allow viewers to immerse themselves in the dream worlds of the stage in an almost abstract form. The newly created series is accompanied by a large-scale wall installation and light sources developed by the artist himself: foreground and background interact; model and idyll, cultural history and the present merge to form a staging of an idealised archive.
THOMAS DEMAND – Spaces that dream of yesterday
27.05.2026 – 24.01.2027
Wien, MAK – Museum für angewandte Kunst
Stubenring 5
1010 Vienna
www.mak.at
