ABOUT
Peter Freund is usually working on something else. He writes to avoid making art and makes art to avoid writing. He is a sometimes curator so as to avoid his own work, but usually that inspires him to write or make art. His projects have routinely used appropriation as an instrument to cut conceptual holes in the fabric of historical memory and related enigmas. But for obvious reasons his practice clings to the necessity of diversions, interruptions, obstacles, and communicative blotches.
Peter has exhibited in the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Russia, Asia, and the Middle East. Since 2018, he has been based in Barcelona and has collaborated with various art and research venues in Spain, Portugal, and Germany. Freund is Professor of Art at Saint Mary's College of California (USA), currently on leave.
In response to the urgent question of contemporary collectivity, Peter has been investigating experimental artistic collaboration in theory and practice by developing the speculative methodology of «retraction» in published and exhibited works . In 2020, he co-founded the Barcelona-based artist collective, Adversorecto. The collective has produced individual and collaborative projects in widely varying mediums inspired by an aesthetic of non-consensus and inverted resistance. Their 2025 solo exhibition, «Round 1.1: A Hairy Decalogue», was presented in a five month run at the Mudas Museum of Contemporary Art (Madeira, Portugal).
An essay on his current related curatorial project, Impossible Cinema, sprung from the contributions of twelve international artists, is forthcoming in a peer-reviewed journal. As a cross-pollinating diversion, Freund has been writing an experimental novel, tentatively titled Adjuvant, for the last four years.
CV | INTERVIEWS | ADVERSORECTO COLLECTIVE | TEACHING