Image courtesy of Fondazione Prada

Thomas Demand: L’image volée at Fondazione Prada

“L’image volée” (The stolen image) is a group show curated by artist Thomas Demand that includes more than 90 works produced by over 60 artists from 1820 through the present day. Demand’s idea for the exhibition is to explore the way we all rely on pre-existing models, and how artists have always referred to existing imagery to make their own.

 

Image courtesy of Fondazione Prada

 

Questioning the boundaries between originality, conceptual inventiveness and the culture of the copy, the project focuses on theft, authorship, annexation and the creative potential of such pursuits. The exhibition presents three possible investigations: the physical appropriation of the object or its absence; theft as related to the image per se rather than
the concrete object itself; and the act of stealing through the making of an image.

 

Image courtesy of Fondazione Prada

 

The exhibition has been conceived as an eccentric, unconventional exploration of such topics through empirical inquiry. Rather than an encyclopedic analysis, it offers visitors an unorthodox insight into a voyage of artistic discovery and research. The first section of the exhibition displays photographs, paintings and films in which the stolen or missing object becomes the scene or evidence of a crime.

 

Image courtesy of Fondazione Prada

 

The second part of the exhibition analyzes the logic behind appropriation within the creative process. This section begins with the concept of counterfeiting and falsification, then it continues with a group of works in which the artists borrow elements from another medium or language, or decontextualize the images themselves.

 

Image courtesy of Fondazione Prada

 

The third part of the exhibition presents a show within the show curated by a prominent contemporary industrial designer, featuring spy tools used by the GDR and the Soviet Union on their citizens: technological instruments capable of breaking down the barriers of the private sphere, selected for the prophetic beauty of their rational design as related to contemporary computers and smartphones.

 

Fondazione Prada, Milan
Thomas Demand: L’image volée
March 18 – August 28, 2016

 

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