Jason Hendrik Hansma

Untitled (Not Now, Not Quite)
Laser Animation
Dimensions Variable

  1. A person stands beside a magenta-purple painting, pressing gold leaf onto a seam. The hand’s position suggests repair or application. A section of the wall catches the flash, revealing subtle texture and traces of previous handling. The person’s forearm shows tattoos partially visible against a dark sleeve.
  2. A worktable covered in plastic sheeting holds a brush with pale bristles, a small pencil, strips of paper flecked with gold, and scattered workshop tools. Light falls unevenly across the table, creating zones of warmth and shadow. Beneath the surface, parts of a floor and a case are visible, indicating an installation in progress.
  3. Several sheets of paper, secured to a white wall with fluorescent yellow, green, and red tape, display typed notes, sketches, and a small printed reproduction of a classical painting. A pale purple panel rests below, while a black cable and socket along the right edge indicate a studio or workspace environment.
  4. A person stands beside a table covered with sheets of paper and coloured materials. Their hand holds a print with two purple rectangular fields. Around them lie golden and violet papers, small black-and-white images, and transparent folders. Sunlight cuts across the table, catching the edges of the papers and the folds of the white shirt the person wears.
  5. A desk sits under tall windows where late afternoon light fills the room. On the table, there is an open notebook, a stack of papers, and a vase of bright flowers with red, pink, and orange stems rising at different heights. Shadows from the window frames stretch across the surface, breaking it into geometric bands of light. Outside, the leaves on nearby trees catch the same sunlight and cast a soft green reflection on the glass.
  6. A tall panel painted in purple is carried across a large room with high windows and theatre lighting overhead. The person’s back faces the camera as they move the structure toward a stage-like platform. Two additional panels lean against the wall, while the light from the windows outlines the scale of the interior space.
  7. A person leans beneath a purple panel, holding a small knife against its edge. Their arm, marked by tattoos of a snake and other figures, is caught in the flash. The person’s focus appears on a fine detail near the corner, possibly trimming or adjusting the panel’s surface.
  8. Plastic sheeting covers the floor of a room, where several bottles of purple paint have been placed. Some bottles stand upright, while one balances precariously on another. Near them, a roller and brush rest beside an open jar, spilling paint onto the surface below. The pigment pools and splatters across the plastic, mingling with faint reflections of light from the surrounding space.
  9. An array of LED panels fills the frame. Each unit, marked “MPLED,” connects through a lattice of black cables and orange connectors. A single metal pipe runs vertically through the centre, interrupting the near-symmetry of the modular grid. The light reveals the panels’ heat sinks, ridged and matte, forming a surface that reads as both mechanical and patterned.

Selected work

Jason Hendrik Hansma (b. 1988) engages with film, sound, and installation. Informed by theories of the pre-linguistic, the liminal, and the slur, his practice constructs encounters situated at the threshold of articulation, where recognition occurs prior to naming.

Hansma develops his work through sustained research that integrates archival materials, philosophy, language development, and digital culture. Collaborating with interdisciplinary teams, he creates formal systems manifested in film, spatial installations, and multi-channel sound environments. These works are presented at, museums, galleries, festivals and clubs, and are realised as touring, reconfigurable spatial systems that engage diverse audiences in shared experiences of attention and perception.

His work has been presented at the Fenix Museum Rotterdam, Ultra Fiorucci, Grand Palais, UNESCO, Bauhaus Dessau, Eye Filmmuseum, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, and featured in publications including Artforum, Frieze, Vogue, and NSS Magazine. His films have been screened as an address at the European Parliament and the World Economic Forum.

Hansma serves as co-director of Shimmer, a curatorial and production platform established with curator Eloise Sweetman. Shimmer functions both as a programme and as a long-term cultural infrastructure, producing exhibitions, commissions, and public programmes that emphasise encounter, transmission, and sustained public engagement. It operates as a network for collaboration, distribution, and audience development, and has realised projects with over 220 artists, including Ellen Gallagher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Lawrence Weiner. Hansma also contributes writings on the ethics and methodologies of curating from the perspective of an artist.

In addition to his artistic practice, Hansma has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and the University of Amsterdam. He currently serves as an advisor to the Mondriaan Fonds.

He lives and works in both Berlin and Rotterdam.

Recent texts/books

  • Nocturnalities –
    Published by Jesse Presse and Onomatopee Projects, 2025

    Download Here

  • In Our Real Life
    New book of photography and essays, published by Shimmer Press 2024

  • Say it Right
    published by the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut, research fellowship project, 2022

    Download Here

  • The Voice that Remains – PUBLICS Helsinki
    Published by Lugemik & PUBLICS, 2024

    Download Here

  • When it Comes to Certain Songs, Aphasia, the Studio, Abstraction and Disability.
    With annotations by Élisabeth Lebovici, Joseph Grigely, and Gordon Hall, 2019

    Download Here

  • A Centre Cannot Hold
    New publication with a text by Jo-ey Tang, 2020

    Download Here

Forthcoming/Recent

  • 2019
    Reading and panel discussion at De Appel, Amsterdam
  • 2019
    Reading by Kris Dittel at De Appel for Amsterdam Art Weekend
  • 2019
    ‘When it Comes to Certain Rooms’ La Maison Van Doesburg, Paris
  • 2019
    De l’île au monde, Centre international d’art et du paysage Île de Vassivière
  • 2019
    Il est une fois dans l’Ouest, Frac Aquitaine – La MECA, Bordeaux
  • 2019
    State of Transparency, Looiersgracht 60 Amsterdam
  • 2019
    LW/LW with Louwrien Wijers and Lawrence Weiner at Shimmer (curator)
  • 2019
    Residency and exhibition at La Maison Van Doesburg, Paris
  • 2019
    Exhibition at Videotage and Art Basel, Hong Kong