Press Kit (August 30th/31st, 2012) - Goldmann Public Relations ...

NEWTOPIA: The State of Human Rights
Contemporary Arts Exhibition in Mechelen and Brussels
01.09. – 10.12.2012
BARBARA HAMMER was born in 1939 in Hollywood, USA. She lives and
works in New York, USA.
Barbara Hammer is known for creating groundbreaking feminist
experimental films that deal with gay rights, gender roles, lesbian pride, and
collective action. Hammer is author of some of the first and seminal lesbianmade
films in history, including ‘Dyketactics’ (1974) and ‘Women I Love’
(1976). While in the 1970s her films dealt with the representation of taboo
subjects through performance and in the 1980s she began using an optical
printer to make films that explore perception, her more recent films since
the 1990s are documentaries that explore hidden aspects of queer history.
Recent solo exhibitions include: The Fearless Frame, Tate Modern, London
(2012); Barbara Hammer, KOW, Berlin (2011); Barbara Hammer, MoMA,
New York (2010). Recent group exhibitions include: The Visible Vagina,
David Nolan Gallery, New York (2010); Everywhere. Sexual Diversity
Policies in Art, CGAC, Santiago de Compostela (2009); Migrating Forms,
Anthology Film Archives, New York (2009); WACK! Art and the Feminist
Revolution, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, P.S. 1, New York, The
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the National Museum of
Women in the Arts, Washington (2007/8); Comfort Zone, Santa Fe Art
Institute (2007). www.barbarahammer.com
JAN PETER HAMMER was born in 1970 in Kirchheim-Teck, Germany. He
lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Jan Peter Hammer’s artistic practice revolves around narrative and the
articulation of text and image. The artist often works with video installation
and slide projections in which real events are etched onto fictional stories.
The past is unpredictable; the way we recall and reconstruct past
experiences is as unsettled as the way History narrates itself. Self and
society remain locked in a dialectical loop. Narration is a recursive interplay,
in which personal stories are always sketched against the backdrop of an
historical leitmotif. Jan Peter Hammer’s characters are, thus, both familiar
and sui generis, ordinary and unique, idiosyncratic and clichéd. As if led by
an invisible hand, their innermost beliefs are an expression of the zeitgeist
and their rational certainties are founded on ideology, yet they remain
unyielding. His works can all be read as reflections on the consequences of
rugged individualism and free-market economics.
Recent solo exhibitions include: The Invisible Hand, Kunstverein Arnsberg,
Arnsberg (2011/2); The Anarchist Banker, Supportico Lopez, Berlin (2010);
The End of Love, COMA, Berlin (2007). Recent group exhibitions include:
Without Reality there is no Utopia, CAAC - Centro Andaluz de Arte
Contemporaneo, Seville (2011); Image-Movement, CAC - Centre d’Art
Contemporain, Geneva (2010); Light is a Kind of Rhythm, Pavillon an der
Volksbühne, Berlin (2008); Anonym, in the Future..., Schirn Kunsthalle,
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