Interview: Peter Goché
Luca Curci talks with Peter Goché during BARCELONA CONTEMPORARY 2021, 3rd Edition, at Valid World Hall Gallery.

Peter Goché is an artist, architect and educator. Goché works with the nature of perception and spatial phenomenon in developing his experimental drawing practice. His works provoke a temporal-spatial encounter that understand the simultaneous and complex nature of cerebral and corporeal experience. He is founder and director of Black Contemporary, a rural field station dedicated to the study of experimental drawing and perception. He has co-lead workshops at the Venice Biennale in 2014 and 2018 and mounted multiple exhibitions and lectures on his creative practice and scholarship at many conferences and cultural institutions throughout North America and Western Europe.

Luca Curci – What is art for you?
Peter Goché – Drawing is an emancipatory practice in which one is set free from legal, social or political restrictions; liberation. It is an immersive act, to which I refer as a sentient-based labor. Operating beyond the two-dimensional plane, and sourcing derelict materials as medium, the consequent body of work yields an incomplete set of 1:1 drawing assemblies with the relative capacity to unite or react or interact with the latent dimensions of our collective inherited landscape. 

LC – What’s your background? What is the experience that has influenced your work the most? 
PG – As artist, architect and educator. I’m the founder and director of Black Contemporary, a rural field station dedicated to the study of experimental drawing and perception. I have staged exhibitions of my work at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, The Soap Factory, the Des Moines Art Center, University of Florida School of Architecture, the Waldemar A. Schmidt Art Gallery, Project Project and The Maple Street Construct. He has co-lead workshops at the 2014 and 2018 Venice Biennale. As educator in the Department of Architecture and foundational design at Iowa State University. I hold both B. Arch and M. Arch degrees in architectural studies from Iowa State University. I have presented papers and lectured on my creative practice and scholarship at many conferences and cultural institutions throughout North America and Western Europe. My understanding and sensibilities regarding experimental drawing and atmospheric cartographies stem from an agrarian upbringing and ongoing research in art, architecture and anthropology at Iowa State University. Equally, my travel throughout North America, Europe and the Czech Republic has nurtured my interest in human beings, their practices and the ways they occupy and perceive space.

LC – Where do you find your inspiration?
PG – I am inspired by the inherited rural landscape and the various agricultural constructs that have been left dormant for the past couple decades.

LC – How is being an artist nowadays?
PG – Being an artist in today’s culture is rewarding in the sense that it offers a range of diverse perspectives that feed the readership of my work.

LC – Did your style change over the years?
PG – In which way? My style has not changed significantly. As an installation artist, I see the world around us as ever changing though the content of our past remains relatively consistent. Human behavior and appreciation tends to be nostalgic though my work has evolved beyond nostalgia and deals head on with the affect of materiality and the phenomenon associated with the various arrangements and inquiries. I am less interested in what my work means and more interested in what it can do as a matter of perceptual experience for me and the viewer.

LC – What do you think about the concept of this festival? How did it inspire you?
PG – As a forum for direct exchange of ideas and contacts between collectors, artists, photographers, designers and art professionals, I am honored to be involved and feel the art is a profound means by which such exchanges can increase our capacity as a civilization to understand the cultural perspectives held throughout the world.

LC – In which way the artwork presented in our exhibition is connected with the festival’s theme?
PG – The work I have contributed to this forum holds a historic and global power to connect the consumer world of denim jeans to the craft/labor of such merchandise.

LC – Do you think ITSLIQUID GROUP can represent an opportunity for artists?
PG – Absolutely, ITSLIQUID is a wonderful opportunity to connect artists with an international audience.

LC – Did you enjoy cooperating with us?
PG – I have and continue to enjoy the coordination with ITSLIQUD. Particularly, I appreciate the expediency with which our relationship has developed. As curator of various shows here at Black Contemporary in Iowa, I am aware of the enormous tasks involved in such events and would like to thank all involved.

LC – What do you think about ITSLIQUID Platform?
PG – The platform offers a fantastic range of artist to participate with each others work and understand our own work in the context of other prolific artist.