The plates and bowls move as if by magic rotating continuously on a folding table in an otherwise empty space. They look deceptively real. Thomas Demand used paper and cardboard to recreate props that have been preserved from one of the earliest works by the Lumière film pioneers,
Assiettes tournantes (1896). In just 44 seconds, the audience followed the then celebrated juggler and animator Félicien Trewey as he spun by hand these very plates and bowls behind this very table.

From the earliest days of film, the urge to document reality in motion inspired the invention of fascinating techniques such as dissolve, time-lapse, slow motion, split screen, and stop-motion. In Trick, Thomas Demand creates illusion on several levels; the work itself is tantamount to a bag of tricks. A projector set up in a projection booth casts a moving image onto the wall in a film format (35mm celluloid film) that was in use for cinema productions until the advent of digital projection. This, in turn, references a showpiece that the Lumière brothers captured more than 120 years ago on a 17-meter-long strip of highly flammable nitrate film. In comparison, the paper tableware set in motion with the help of the stop-motion technique appears indestructible. Deception turns into seduction because the fascination of the projection and the ever so immaterial reality of the illusions are as enticing and old as the making of pictures itself.