Scheune (Barn)

Thomas Demand saw an article in a magazine depicting the last studio of Jackson Pollock. Greatly moved by the building, he set out to recreate the structure, the result being Scheune. Pollock's studio was a large barn with two big windows on one side through which most of the light fell. Demand built his own identical replica in his studio. However, when he came to take the photograph, the image always came out with the edges blurred. Somehow, the whole barn seemed to be moving. Demand was convinced that Pollock's ghost was responsible, somehow the ghost had been trapped in the image. He had succeeded in bringing to life a ghost-like space and now a ghost had possessed it. The artist even describes his work as "itself a ghost of my vision; even my last work Escalator is moving on the giant screens of Seoul, not because of actual movement but because the endless repetition of stillness, a ghost of movement." Demand believes that his work is an attempt to free histories from the inevitable restraint of their relegation to the past, even to kill history so that its spirit could move into the universe of images and become free from the weight of time. His works are potent with reference to individual stories and yet devoid of any obvious clues. To the viewer, ignorant of the specific circumstances of their creation, they appear as bland representations of architectural spaces with no past, future or present.