Jacob C. Hammes

Artist Statement
Jacob C. Hammes

Throughout my practice is a broad recognition of an ambiguous distinction between what we perceive and what we believe. I consider my work an exploration of the physical and psychological conditions that inform the experience of space and sensory perception and how that relates to experience. I approach these issues through the lens of such deeply embedded concepts such as Optimism/Pessimism, Biology and Phenomenology, broadly defined in order to question established parameters that distinguish nature from artifice.

The kind of art experience that I'm concerned with are those that signal transformation, where an individual can confront an established cognitive approach to the physical world. Instead of providing firm answers or solutions, the value of this action is in the moment where meaning develops and collects through a performative action of perception and cognition. Within this category of experience, the projects I find most dynamic involve a convergence of disparate ideas, weaving ideas together through abstraction or hybridization, both of materials and within dualities of signification and belief. Forming both direct and often ambiguous relationships, and challenging the tangibility of materials and the often illusionistic properties of production methods.

I have always maintained a deep curiosity about materials and a desire to find meaning in the interrelation of subjects and objects. Much of my recent work demonstrates this curiosity through the use of a wide range of methods and materials that build upon an investigation into the origins of technology and how that relates to anthropological domestication. Some of these objects, while possessing a visual likeness to objects of prehistoric origin, are made from brick mortar, grout, polystyrene and sisal. Inconceivable as genuine artifacts, the series proposes that the source of our gradual domestication comes from these first steps of building shelter, where the development of such deeply embedded concepts such as dimensional perspective or luxury shares a causal relationship to the primitive invention of the building.

My interest in the ambiguous nature of belief has led me to study hypnosis both as performance and as a collaborative method for the creation of objects, images, and narrative. Using hypnosis as a catalyst to disrupt normal perception and move toward a more desire-oriented process that questions authorship and power dynamics within collaboration. Within this work my concern is to reconcile the perception of our human experience of the world with the abstract concepts we use to make sense of it.

My use of electronic and digital media has often provided a method to paradoxically employ technology in order to engage in discourse about shifting attitudes towards technology. I have grown increasingly aware of the lack of focus we place on human experience due to the potency of digitally-mediated communication and its pervasive influence in our desires. This work exploits the still functioning mechanical properties of discarded electronics such as the video deck or the clock radio, and put them to use in an even more primitive function, addressing the failures of consumer technology and exploring how a machine can be used to confront its transient cultural status and obsolescence by reframing the focus on experience.