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Tombstone, a sculpture featuring a smoke chimney beneath rotating silky neckties, represents the practice of commemorating sealed deals with objects known as ‘deal toys’ or colloquially, tombstones. In corporate environments, the once-flamboyant display of wealth from the golden Wall Street days (from 1980-2000s) has been replaced by a sterile look that masks the ongoing extravagance. Roundaboutness, a LED sign, circulates empty messages, mirroring the hollow phrases often used in corporate ideology to disguise the pursuit of profit as positive and meaningful. Dojima Rice Exchange extends video into a small-scale paper set resembling rice fields, like a puppet theatre, referencing the early predecessors of the modern banking system.

Demper’s sculptures invite wonder, transforming the mystified boredom of financial jargon into bright, enchanting objects with unpredictable rhythms and ways of animating the text, symbols and facts. These mechanical and digital gestures – whether repetitive, continuous, unpredictable, sudden, loud, or dematerialised like smoke or sound –induce uneasy feelings. A sense of incomprehensibility arises: as if you are confronting the giant of the economy.

Set 2: 239 W 26th St

What clearly looks like a film set from the outside, transforms into a hallway of an old apartment building when stepping in. 239 W 26th St is a realistic set with a soft carpeted floor that leaves you wondering about the lives behind the closed doors. You hear sounds of habitation: a washing machine, TV, followed by a siren and traffic – evoking a busy city. A door opens to your right, revealing a macabre janitorial closet.

Demper explains this installation with two disturbing disclosures. The first is about companies secretly buying life insurance on their most vulnerable employees, collecting the profits without notifying the families. The second is about the invention of the everlasting light bulb, which was suppressed by a corporate cartel ensuring every light bulb produced breaks down after 1,000 operating hours. The bulb shining in this twisted closet is expected to burn out during the show. If you’ve ever thought about the morality of corporations or been swayed by their sustainable, ethical, or green marketing messages, consider a notion Demper mentions: fiduciary duty. This is the legal responsibility of a company to act solely in the best interest of its shareholders – not its employees, clients, or ethical considerations.

At the very end of the hallway, tension mounts as a shadow creeps behind frosted glass. Next to me, there is a peephole in one of the side doors. I peek. There is a person inside, vacuuming an old-fashioned apartment covered in the same beige carpet. According to the text accompanying the exhibition, this is Donny, a character central to Bob’s upcoming feature film 5,000 Miles. Donny is currently on a sick leave due to a burnout from his corporate job.

While people working in Dutch tall buildings may appear composed, the reality is often one of underlying stress and tension, Demper explains. ‘I try to examine the origins and operations of financial systems from the broadest perspective possible, understanding their strange hold on us. The people at the top of large companies, who manipulate financial markets, try to instil the confidence that they have it all under control. This is, of course, an illusion. What they mean is that they have the risks managed in a way that if things go wrong, they don’t have to bear the consequences themselves. The more I find out about this system, the more oppressive it feels to me.’

Set 3: the Meeting Room

In the new building of 1646, visitors can step into an old fashioned corporate meeting room complete with carpeted floor, phones, and corporate art pieces holding the capital. Within this setting, Demper presents an oil painting titled Folie à plusieurs, depicting a symbolic ouroboros composed of people striking the head of the one in front with tools such as hammers, axes, wrenches, mallets, and saws. The visceral act is enhanced by the sound spreading the room from the accompanying film.

On the big screen, fragments from 5,000 Miles showcase Donny facing the consequences of his burnout. Donny’s face, portrayed as a mask with an undirected gaze, lends him an animated detachment from reality. The film, crafted along two distinct trajectories – self-compiled stock footage from a trip across the USA and character/set developments in the Netherlands – further enhances the depiction of Donny ’s separation from his surroundings and reality at large.

Demper’s approach to filmmaking defies conventional methods, prioritising spontaneity over practicality. His characters emerge organically within the spaces they inhabit or visit, their personalities shaped by clothing-choices, random sentences, sudden gestures or sounds that coalesce time. This interdisciplinary practice incorporates film, sculpture, and sound to craft ambients rooted in extensive research and intuitive creation.

Within the gallery space, Demper’s set-building delves into the behind-the-scenes of constructed realities, drawing parallels between films – whose often fabricated images shape our understanding of the world – and the ideologies we live in and have learned to perceive as truth. In a profit-driven environment, humaneness is not a priority, Demper shows us while exploring the strategies used to shape our beliefs. The exhibition In Tall Buildings reveals that the financial establishment is not in control of the market’s unpredictable nature. But it has created enough fictive distance from our common ground to mystify its flows and flaws.