Jan Peter Hammer is a Berlin based German artist. In 2016, he was selected as artistic research fellow (PhD) at KHiO – Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway. Hammer’s works were shown at Museum of Contemporary Art in Basel, 2019; Bergen Assembly 2019; the 69th Berlinale, 2018; MACBA – Barcelona, 2015; 14. Istanbul Biennale 2015; Yerbabuena Art Center, San Francisco, 2013.
Jan Peter Hammer began his artistic career with a strong interest in film theory and literature. Besides objects and installations he produced several films and videos featuring short dramas and political arguments, as well as documentaries and essay films. Recurring themes are inequality, incarceration, behavioral psychology, digitalization and neoliberalism. A defining work for his methodology was an investigation of a religious retreat in the late 1960s in the Greater New York area between 2000-2002. Hammer knew of the retreat’s existence only through an obscure patch on a shirt he bought in a second hand store. That journey into the unknown resulted in several installations of images and objects he collected during the fieldtrips. The pseudo-forensic associations engendered an peculiar learning process because their rhizomatic potential connoted imperilism, white supremacyn, settler colonialism and patriarchy.
Jan Peter Hammer is represented by Gallery LABOR | Mexico City.