iMAK – Museum of Applied ArtsInnere Stadt
THOMAS DEMAND: Rooms That Dream of the Past
Thomas Demand turns historic theatre set models, from the Baroque to the early 20th century, into a new photographic series with large wall installations and custom lighting.
More in Vienna
You walk into what looks like a cave. The rock walls are wallpaper printed with photos of paper Demand crumpled in his studio, and eight ceiling lamps he designed throw a cool industrial light over the bare marble floor. He says his negatives will one day be stored in old salt mines; the room looks like that archive.
Demand usually rebuilds places in paper and photographs them. Here he photographed real things: shoebox-sized stage models from the Baroque to 1900, kept in theatre museums in Vienna, Munich and Monaco. He shot each through a periscope, 80 or 90 frames at a time, and stitched them into about two dozen large prints. Tannhäuser and Guillaume Tell become forests of painted paper firs.
Falter's Nicole Scheyerer wrote that the new photos don't pull you in much and that the cave wallpaper is what stays with you. It's in MAK Contemporary, under-19s are free, Tuesdays run to 9pm, and it closes on 24 January 2027.
Look for
The crumpled-paper cave
Look at the walls: what reads as a rock grotto is wallpaper made from Demand's studio photos of crumpled paper, with the light and shadow doing the illusion.
The eight ceiling lamps
Demand designed the lamps himself from a handmade cardboard model, and their cool industrial light makes the hall feel like an underground storage depot.
Tell XXI (2026)
The towering set for Rossini's last opera, Guillaume Tell, turned into a forest of painted paper firs, stitched digitally from periscope shots.
Tannhäuser IX (2026)
Wagner's Tannhäuser set caught as a dark silhouette that the MAK likens to a Caspar David Friedrich landscape.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want Demand's classic paper rebuilds: here he photographed existing models and stitched the shots digitally.
With kids
Under-19s enter free.
Also at MAK – Museum of Applied Arts
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Image credits
9
- THOMAS DEMAND: Rooms That Dream of the Past© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/BILDRECHT GmbH, Vienna
- tierisch menschlichGraciela Iturbide, Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), Juchitán, Oaxaca, 1979. Dom Museum Wien, Otto Mauer Contemporary, Courtesy of the artist, Foto: L. Deinhardstein.
- A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew - Eran ShakineCourtesy of Jewish Museum Vienna (Jüdisches Museum Wien)
- The Special Case of Steffy Goldner: The New York Philharmonic's First WomanCourtesy of Jewish Museum Vienna (Jüdisches Museum Wien)
- MAK – Museum of Applied ArtsGugerell / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Dom Museum WienBauer Alfons / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Haus der MusikClemens Pfeiffer, Wikimedia Commons
- Jewish Museum Vienna (Jüdisches Museum Wien)Sonja Bachmayer / Jewish Museum Vienna, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Kunst Haus Wien – Museum HundertwasserC.Stadler/Bwag, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0