Jörg HaNam

* 1944

My dream of living consciously with nature: A bio-technological circle that creates ecological jeans and paintings, thus merging art and fashion. Hans-Jörg Hamann has been a creative mind throughout his life. He began painting at an early age. As a 14-year-old refugee, he earned extra money for his mother by painting from memory what war-traumatized people carried with them — memories of peaceful times, home (habitat, landscape), or family. For over 50 years, Hamann has employed blurriness as an artistic tool in all his works — initially unconsciously, but quickly with intention. Whether as a Creative Director and Product Manager for a Japanese corporation or today, as a developer of a 100% ecological alternative to conventional, environmentally harmful denim finishing: Hamann often showcases blurriness in his paintings and jeans. In the latter, for example, he seamlessly highlights seams in the design or pushes natural finishing (such as washing or dyeing) into the visual background.

The paintings that Hamann creates with blurriness, scraping, or various other techniques are meant to give more space to the viewer's feelings and the colors of light, leaving the tangible open for discovery. In this perspective, Hamann often tries to incorporate his ecological concerns regarding harmful industrial wastewater discharges into his paintings. "My paintings should provoke thought, but not disgust. I always find an appealing way with abstractions," says Hans-Jörg Hamann.

In abstraction and spatial dimension, the artist Hamann knows no boundaries: Painting over the edges, whether round, padded, or angular, and even into the picture surfaces, the canvas is sometimes visibly and tangibly pulled into depth by up to ten centimeters from a second, stretched frame behind it. With this, Hamann clearly transcends previous technical limits in painting. Clouds and water are usually pre-painted blue and then overlaid with white and off-white shades. White, the main color in painting, does not exist in Hamann's work, and overpainting is not an option. Additionally, the biological painting substances have a quick initial reaction time, which usually does not allow for a sequential approach. Hamann can paint on the right and left simultaneously. With this technique, he outsmarts apparent obstacles and creates beautiful cloud images. Originally from the Hanover region, Hamann has been living in Vietnam for years on a project basis, where he developed the ecological total solution for jeans, produced 100% without wastewater — a fact he officially proved and patented in Europe and the USA back in 1993. He owes the discovery that the solid waste produced during ecological denim finishing can also serve as unique painting substances for artworks and interiors to chance, having developed additional biological aids for this purpose. For Hamann, this discovery is more than a fortunate coincidence: It is a stroke of luck, as the man who consciously shapes his life in harmony with nature can create an innovative, ecologically linked economic cycle that allows him to produce both art and fashion — all in harmony with nature.

Ha Nam – a German-Vietnamese eco-project producing bio-jeans and bio-art. The eco-project Ha Nam in northern Vietnam aims to provide an ecological alternative to the textile environmental sin number one of our time, the production of the world's most popular denim fabric, "Blue Denim." The production of a conventional pair of jeans requires about 40,000 liters of water, most of which becomes polluted and is often discharged directly into the environment as heavily contaminated wastewater. Hans-Jörg Hamann, who is actively volunteering, and his team in Ha Nam have developed the world's first denim finishing process that not only operates without wastewater but also emits ecological substances with which the artist Hamann creates unique paintings.