Biography

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Jens Hoffmann Mesén
Born 1974, San José, Costa Rica

Jens Hoffmann is a writer, editor, educator, exhibition-maker, and art dealer. In 2018, Hoffmann founded the Office for Curatorial Wonders (OCW), an internationally operating agency for exhibition-making based in New York.

In 2021, Hoffmann opened the gallery Hoffmann + Maler + Wallenberg in Nice, and the same year, he founded the publishing company HMW Books.

Over his 20-year career, Hoffmann has organized over four dozen exhibitions, many described as "pioneering" by Hans Ulrich Obrist and "groundbreaking" by Tino Seghal. Artist Claire Fontaine famously referred to Hoffmann as "The Robespierre of curating."

Hoffmann's early career began as an assistant dramaturg at the Theater Am Turm in Frankfurt (1992–1994) and as an associate producer at Performance Space 122 in New York (1994–1995). He then returned to Frankfurt for an internship at the Portikus Kunsthalle (1995), followed by two years as an exhibitions assistant at the Dia Art Foundation in New York (1996–1998). He went on to work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as an assistant curator (1998–2000), before becoming a curator at the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf (2001–2002). From 2003 to 2007, Hoffmann served as director of exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and from 2007 to 2012, he was the director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. During this period, he was also director of the Capp Street Artists in Residency Program in San Francisco (2007–2012).

From 2012 to 2017, Hoffmann was deputy director of the Jewish Museum in New York and senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit from 2012 to 2018. Between 2006 and 2018, Hoffmann worked as a curator and senior advisor for the Kadist Art Foundation, where he formed the Americana Collection, which includes over 300 works by emerging artists from Latin and North America. Additionally, he was a curator for the Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel (CIAC) in Mexico City (2012–2016) and in 2017 was a curator for the Fundación Arte in Buenos Aires.

Between 2013 and 2017, Hoffmann served as the curator for special programs and was on the selection committee of the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center. He was a guest curator for the 30th Istanbul Film Festival in 2011. In 2012, Hoffmann co-founded Vdrome.org alongside Edoardo Bonaspetti, Andrea Lissoni, and Filipa Ramos, an online platform that screens films and videos by visual artists and filmmakers.

From 2011 to 2018, Hoffmann was Editor-at-Large of Mousse Magazine, Milan, and from 2011 to 2017, Editor-in-Chief of The Exhibitionist: Journal on Exhibition Making, which he founded.

In 2007, Hoffmann established the nomadic Museum of Modern Art and Western Antiquities, through which he has curated a trilogy of exhibitions: Section II, Department of Carving and Modeling (Cristina Guerra Gallery, Lisbon, 2019); Section IV, Department of Light Recordings: Lens Drawings (Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, 2013); and Section III, Department of Pigments on Surface: Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative (Thomas Dane Gallery, London, 2007).

Hoffmann has curated and co-curated several large-scale international exhibitions, including the 2nd Honolulu Biennial (Artistic Director, 2017), FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (co-Artistic Director with Michelle Grabner, 2016–2017), Performa 17 (Guest Curator, New York, 2017), and Foto Mexico: Festival Internacional de Fotografía (co-curator, 2016). He also co-curated the 2nd People's Biennial (2014, with Harrell Fletcher), the 9th Shanghai Biennial (2012), and the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011, with Adriano Pedrosa). Additional exhibitions include the 1st People's Biennial (2010, with Harrell Fletcher), the 2nd San Juan Triennial (Puerto Rico, 2009), the 9th Lyon Biennial (2007), and the 1st Prague Biennial (2003). Earlier in his career, Hoffmann was an assistant curator for the 1st Berlin Biennial (1998) and Documenta X in Kassel (1997). In 1999, Hoffmann co-organized the 9th Caribbean Biennial with artist Maurizio Cattelan in St. Kitts.

In 2009, Hoffmann co-founded the People's Biennial with Harrell Fletcher. The project aims to explore and present the creative activities of individuals and collectives whose work might otherwise be overlooked or repressed. The inaugural edition in 2010, organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), toured five U.S. museums between 2011 and 2012, including the ICA in Portland, Oregon, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale, Arizona. The second edition took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2014, and the third edition is scheduled for 2026.

Hoffmann also operated the People's Gallery in San Francisco's Mission District (2011–2012) and, together with artist Adriana Martinez and curator Adam Carr, ran the gallery Espacio Mango in Bogotá, Colombia (2019–2020).

Hoffmann lives with artist and art dealer Emily Sundblad, co-founder and owner of the contemporary art gallery Reena Spaulings in New York and Los Angeles. His daughter, Sophia Bianca Hoffmann, was born in 2003, and Gertrud Stella Adelheid Marie Sundblad in 2021. They live between New York, Stockholm, Milan, and the Côte d'Azur, while Hoffmann also maintains a home near Heredia, Costa Rica.

Born in Costa Rica, Hoffmann grew up in various countries, including Venezuela, Jamaica, Mexico, Senegal, and the UAE, before moving to Germany in 1985.

Hoffmann is the great-grandson of Karl Hoffmann, a biologist and physician who traveled to Costa Rica in 1853 with Alexander von Frantzius to collect natural history specimens. Many species he discovered are named in his honor. 

His granduncle was Elmyr de Hory (Elmer Albert Hoffmann), the Hungarian-born painter and art forger.