Peter Freund Projects

Adversorecto is an artist collective based in Barcelona, Spain, founded in 2020 by Peter Freund and Werner Thöni.

There is no single correct procedure for the artist collective to follow. There are two: All or nothing. One and zero. Verso not recto. Practice despite theory. Word but image. Sight as blindness. Start because finished. It began in 2020 between two Barcelona-based artists, non-native outsiders Peter Freund and Werner Thöni. The collective has enlisted other artists – local and from abroad – in collaborative experiments, resulting in publications and exhibitions.

Barcelona, 2025

Round 1.1: A Hairy Decalogue (2025)
A quick preview of Adversorecto solo exhibition at the Mudas Museum of Contemporary Art, Madeira, Portugal (May 30 - Oct 30, 2025). A collaboration with Portuguese artist Vítor Magalhães. For more information: Round 1.1.

WALL TEXT:
The Question of the Curator

Prohibition. It will have come down to an absence. The classical exhibition of visual art begins and ends with a prohibition: Do not touch. Touch, of course, between the work on display and the observer whose reflections will have been sparked by this withdrawal from physical and intellectual possession. The same prohibition will have applied, like the flip side of a coin, to the requisite space individuating the works themselves.

Inhibition. This pervasive inhibition will have created openings and formed a placeholder for the missing element that makes possible the artistic presentation: the organizing concept, the combinatorial of objects, the pouring rain outside, the shrinking gallery space, the delay of the lost spectator, the guard's outgrown shoe, the empty elevator, the intermittent flashing of the exit sign, the janitor's bucket behind the closing of the closet door, the death of the old mason…. In the end, as in the beginning, the placeholder will have signaled the undefined prime mover: the absent curator. And yet this absence remains, at bottom, a lacuna.

Exhibition. It will have been no accident that the three words – prohibition, inhibition, and exhibition – have related histories. The invited curator ex post facto will have lofted the unexpected concept of the decalogue over a previously proposed exhibit of ten pieces like a nautical fishing net. The curator's surprise net will have in turn made prohibition into the inspiration for merging the individuated pieces into new works. The original exhibit proposal presented a «bout» between Karl and Ady: Marx and his furry companion. A beard and a dog. A forest paradise. A fashion show. A twitching neck and shoulders below an unseen beard. In the curatorial net, the dog will have turned herself inside out in order to reappear as a beard made of billiard sticks. The gallery rooms become a pool table for a match at the precise moment of initial contact. Crackk!

[pf]

Exhibition Proposal #1

Adversorecto: Round One (pdf). The proposal was realized in a 2025 exhibition in collaboration with Portuguese artist/professor Vitor Magalhães, which ran May 30 - October 30 at the MUDAS Museum of Contemporary Art in Madeira, Portugal. See link for more details: «Round 1.1: A Hairy Decalogue».

Exhibition Proposal #2

Adversorecto: Round Two (pdf). We are currently seeking collaborative partnerships to develop and transform this project. The proposed exhibition, comprising ten works of various mediums, investigates an expanded notion of «Schadenfreude», ranging from the psychological to the social and political senses of the term. The body of work includes the documented video-sound installation, «Agony: You Can Go Whenever You Want» and the multi-directional booklet «L’Auca d’en Felix» (see both below), and eight other works.

Part of a series, [L’Auca d’en Félix] is an experimental booklet that reads in four directions. [download pdf]

Text 1 [w]:

quiero tirarme al vacio y
sobrevivir dejar tiradas las zapatillas
deportivas en la puerta del balcon
¡a que se aireen!
soltar la bolsa amarilla y
dar el salto para luego
contemplar la trayectoria de vuelo
echado de espaldas sobre la
grava del patio vecino

Text 2 [p]:

>>
a person
{ }
falling
∞ + x
from a skyscraper
*

strangers
+++
falling
) (
in love
⌄
⌄