Jens Hoffmann
Jens Hoffmann Mesèn (born 1974 in San José, Costa Rica) is a writer and exhibition maker. He has organzied exhibitions since 1997 and is currently the Director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco where he also directs the Capp Street Project artist-in-residence program.
Career
Emerging, unusually, from a training in theater rather than art history or curatorial studies, Hoffmann has used his directorial knowledge in particular to articulate his unique approach to curating. Of key importance for all of his exhibitions is the actual staging of the experience—ranging from the design of the space and installation, the conceptualization of the catalog and related programming, to the attention paid to the performance of the work itself. The ‘stage-set’ or rather the exhibition space, site, or geographical location is itself an important factor in the development of his ideas which respond to both time and place. Hoffmann takes into account both the larger historical and socio-political context in which an exhibition takes place as well as the relevant curatorial or art historical relationships pertaining to a project.
Using the ideas and strategies of artists, in particular conceptual art, and applying this approach to a curatorial idea of the author is a defining characteristic of Hoffmann’s work and results in a highly unique practice and personalized exhibition history reflective of a creative development not dissimilar to that of an artist.
From 1995-1997 Hoffmann worked an Assistant Dramaturge with Tom Stromberg at the legendary Theater Am Tum in Frankfurt. Stromberg and Hoffmann later realized the theater program of Documenta 10 "Theater Sketches" following an invitation by Catherine David. In 1998 Hoffmann became co-curator of the 1st Berlin Biennial which he organized as artistic coordinator with Klaus Biesenbach as well as Nancy Spector and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
From 2001 to 2002 Hoffmann worked as curator for contemporary art under Jean Hubert Martine, at the Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf where he organized "SPECTACULAR: The Art Of Action," a year long examination of the relationship between performance art and the museum collection with various life stagings and actions though out the museum. Previously he worked for Brussels 2000 - Cultural Capital Of Europe for which he curated, with Barbara Vanderlinden, the program "Indiscipline," a series of talks, lectures performances exploring interdisciplinary between science, art, political theory and architecture.
From 2003 to 2007, Hoffmann was the Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He has curated over 30 exhibitions internationally since the late 1990s. Currently he is curating the 9th Shanghai Biennial to open on October 1st at the new Shanghai Museum Of Contemporary Art. He recently was co-curator of the 2nd San Juan Triennial, Puerto Rico, 2009, and was the curator, with Adriano Pedrosa, of the 12th International Istanbul Biennial in 2011. With Harrell Fletcher, Hoffmann developed the People's Biennial. The first edition was presented in 2010 and 2011 at five US museums, organized by Independent Curators International in New York. In 2009 he founded The Exhibitionist: A Journal for Exhibition Making and is editor-at-large of Mousse magazine since 2011.
In 2006 Hoffmann began working with the Kadist Art Foundation based in Paris and San Francisco, for which he has been putting together the 101 Collection, featuring artworks from the West Coast of the United States, as well as El Sur, a collection of artworks by young and emerging Latin American artist.
He is assistant professor at the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and a guest professor at the Nova Academia di Bella Arti in Milan.
He has written more than 150 articles on art and curatorial practice for art magazines and museum publications. His most recent books include The Next Documenta Should be Curated by An Artist (ed.) (Revolver 2004, Frankfurt), Perform, co-authored with Joan Jonas, (Thames & Hudson 2005, London). He is currently authoring SHOW TIME, a history of exhibitions from 1990 to the present, (Thames & Hudson 2012, London) and is editing The Artist's Studio for the series Documents of Contemporary Art (MIT Press and Whitechapel Gallery, 2012, Cambridge and London).
Hoffmann was trained as a theater director and studied Stage Directing, Dramaturgy and Cultural Sociology with Andrea Breth of the Schaubuehne and Manfred Karge of the Berliner Ensemble at the Ernst Busch School for Performing Arts in Berlin. He holds an MA in Theater from DasArts – School for Advanced Research in Theater and Dance Studies at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Amsterdam were he studied under the Dutch theater pionier Ritseart ten Cate.