Drawing upon his background in sculpture, Thomas Demand used paper to build a re-creation of the hotel room where the controversial American writer and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard lived and worked in 1972 and 1973. He used a photograph of the room as his source. After completing his model, Demand photographed it, creating an image that mimics the original, but that is also full of artifice. The even studio lighting, the sharp creases in the white pillow in the foreground, and the lack of detail on objects in the room—like the numberless face of the alarm clock or the keyless typewriter—signal that this is not reality but a mock-up of it. This tension between reality and artifice raises questions about the trust we place in photographs as accurate, unmitigated records of events, times, and places. “It’s not about the real place,” Demand has said. “It’s much more about what we have seen as the real place.”
Explore more
Articles and videos
Installation views
We have identified this work in the following photos from our exhibition history.
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.