L'ésprit D'escalier

Le livre

Stairs, ladders and lifts are the motifs of Thomas Demands latest monograph,LEsprit dEscalier, which is published on the occasion of his show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. The title actually refers to so-called staircase wit, that concise French expression for the chagrin of missed retorts--those hapless comebacks one only ever thinks up belatedly (i.e. when already descending the stairs): I shouldve said (fill in blank)! etc. One of Demands ironic allusions to his title is a new work titled Landing, which shows the shards of broken Qing vases on a staircase--a mishap caused by a visitor to The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge in January 2006, who stumbled on his shoelaces and crashed into the three eighteenth-century vases, smashing them to pieces. As ever, Demand combines conceptual rigor and exacting craft in his painstakingly re-created sets, with their eerie edge of artifice.LEsprit dEscalierpresents an overview of his current work in 23 large photographs, plus a film project and an architectural installation specially prepared for his Irish Museum exhibition. Alongside an excerpt from David Foster WallacesGirl with Curious Hair, it also includes commissioned writings by Dave Eggers, Paul Oliver, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Leith, Rachael Thomas and Enrique Juncosa.