Jan Peter Hammer

Jan Peter Hammer creates films and performances that connect literature and cinema, seeking to give importance to concepts that often only appear as remote generalities. For example, The Fable of the Bees, The Anarchist Banker, and Monarchs, Men & Monsters are a series of films that use narrative to reflect on the consequences of rugged individualism and free-market economics. His works frequently focus on the experience of an individual as a means to make sense of the great social puzzle around them, as in a performance piece where he hired a security guard to sit across on an amount of cash during the opening hours of the gallery and the duration of the show. Reminiscent of literary works of Beckett, guard and money are locked together in an absurd game, revealing the invisible abstraction of the economic cycle in a painfully concrete action.

Selected exhibitions include Supportico Lopez in Berlin, Gallery Limoncello in London, Galerie Meerrettich in Berlin, Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York, Hiromi Yoshii Gallery in Tokyo, John Connelly Presents in New York, UCLA Biennial 2001 in Los Angeles.