AHLGRENS BILAR, 1997
by Peter Geschwind
ANTI AESTHETICS-A conversation with Peter Geschwind
Anna Orrghen, Material, meets with Peter Geschwind who she thinks is one of the most interesting artists of the young Swedish contemporary art scene. Here he talks about making art of what´s being around, a dancing honey puff, the concept of "the artist" and much more. Enjoy this interview with the man who found his way into art through his favourite records.

by Anna Orrghen, Material nr 36, 1998

Peter Geschwind's artisticalness is one of the most interesting of the young Swedish contemporary art scene. He has also received attention on a large scale, as well as on the national as the international art scene and has during the period of 1998/99 received the IASPIS scholarship in Stockholm. A clear indication of the characteristic in his work is given by the titles of a selection of exhibitions in which he has participated during this autumn: "Strange Days" at Ynglingagatan 1, "Wonderland" at Konsthallen, Bohusläns Museum and "Swedish Mess" at Arkipelag. His works are not seldomly regarded as messy and raise often a feeling of delights amongst the viewer, as well as children as grown ups. An important aspect of this is the destructiveness which runs parallel to the joyfulness - a theme with the opportunity to appeal for the viewers sadistic tendencies. The fact that the works give the impression of being a composition of what's accidentally has been in the surroundings of the artist, is partly impeccable. But they are at the same time the result of a well thought out and clearly worded artisticalness.

Anna Orrghen (AO): If I was to draw out a general description of your works I would characterise them as an expression of anti aesthetics. What have been important influences for you?

Peter Geschwind (PG): By having grown up during the seventies surrounded by among other things the punk, it feels quite natural to have an unrough expression. It could also be a reaction towards the slim aesthetics of the eighties. My influences are mostly fetched from music, tv, film and computer games. Before I began working with art I played in different bands and I am interested in an immediate experience which for example music could be - a trip towards something wordless. The entrance to art came through the artists who made the record covers to the music I was listening to at that time, as for example Velvet Underground - Andy Warhol, Sonic Youth - Mike Kelly and so on, and was pretty early hooked on the American west coast scene with above all Paul McCarthy. In the beginning I worked mostly with video, which as a medium is closest to music, but thought that it would be fun to try to transfer the intensity of sound, picture and motion that a video contains, to an object.




CANDYMAN, 1998
by Peter Geschwind
AO: With the starting point in just Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelly and Andy Warhol as important influences, maybe the fact that most of your works inherit a part of rattleness and motion, partly manifest in the works but also on a connotative level in the titles, is not so strange. What I among other things is thinking of is Merry-Go-Round that spins around and crashes puppets in plaster as one pushes a pedal, Soda Stream, the bottle man who vomits each time he's fed up or in titles as "All fucked up", "Moving Trash" and "White Light/White heat".

PG: I think it deals with an attempt to create an expression that are in accordance with my own expectations, my fundamental idea is not to create moving objects. I am not that interested in technique, and the technical solutions I am using are often quite simple, for example a toy ready to be used which I have dressed up as a heap of trash. It is all about different ways of increasing the intensity of an object that's originally remains still.

AO: You work a lot on site.

"Opposite the variation with the litterbag who's appearance reminded of someone sniffing thinner, it looked like a teenager who had committed suicide or was trying to fix the electricity."

PG:I always try to find the conditions at the exhibition place that suits best with my intention, and it happens very seldom that I have an exhibition completely done before I reach the place. To relate oneself to the exhibition room while putting it together, is another important aspect as it is not until then I will be able to understand how the different parts of the exhibition work together in the room. It is also possible that the room itself contains possibilities to create something one has not thought of earlier. During my examination exhibition at Mejan there were a pair of false legs wearing curved out jeans and adidassneakers which had been taken part in several different situations earlier but that I did not know what to do with at this exhibition. One variation was to pull on a black litterbag around the body, but since the figure only was composed by a pair of legs it almost totally disappeared into the litterbag. But then I suddenly caught sight of a small space in the inner room of the gallery where the ceiling is composed by detachable laminas. I tried to remove a couple of the plates and replace them with the legs with the result that the "body" disappeared into the cavity. Opposite the variation with the litterbag who's appearance reminded of someone sniffing thinner, it looked like a teenager who had committed suicide or was trying to fix the electricity. To find a new solution which goes with the rest of the space is always pleasant, and it is often enough with one small detail for the rest of the things to be integrated in the situation. It may be even more natural to take ones starting point from objects at place while working in a public context. For a project at Ynglingagatan in connection with Cary S. Leibowitz's exhibition, I placed the legs in an advertising pillar outside the gallery. It was something that didn't struck my mind until after visiting the neighbourhood around the gallery. While catching sight of the advertising pillar, I visualised myself standing inside the space, which ought to look quite strange. Even though I partly create the exhibition at place, I have spent a long period of time trying to find out solutions. I have been working with some things for a very long time, for example the leg sculpture. Ideas often return to some kind of primary idea. At that stage I try to find the next step that will distinguish it from earlier variations, which sometimes leads on to new things.

AO: At your exhibition at the project room of the Moderna Musset at Centre Culturel Suedois in Paris last summer, you really alluded to the place by creating a formation which reminded of the Eiffel Tower. This was made by stretching a long, green plastic tube across the exhibition space, in a diagonal formation from floor to ceiling.

PG: What you say here is a good example of how something I make also works as a comment to the place where it is shown. I had such a tube at "Toy Store" in Los Angeles, where I glued it on the wall and made it wind from a smaller room into a bigger room where the exhibition took place, while depicting flower power-flowers on the wall. The tube reflected the place, at the same time as it could be regarded as a joke.

AO: Something that often comes to my mind while looking at your work in different situations, is art as a social event. How would you describe that phenomenon?

PG: It depends on what you mean by a social event. One thing I find important is to also make things together with other people and not only to withdraw oneself into one's studio. We were a couple of friends ho had a band at Konstfack, where we played with different attitudes within music and made a couple of gigs, among others a three-minute concert at W.C F.art where we squeezed in everything that goes with it - smoke machines, bombs, stroboscope, souvenirs and so forth. The visitors at W.C who wasn't acquainted with the project scarcely managed to raise their eyes from their beer before it was over. That is also a project which is dependent on a live audience. Later on we held a workshop at Kulturhuset - Lava, where our aim was to show people how simple and fun it is to make foil sculptures. It succeeded beyond expectation since many of the visitors although they at a first sight thought it to be a stupid project, stayed and built something, and finally left the place with a huge foil sculpture under one's arm to take the underground home. This spring I was one of the organisers beyond the exhibition "Stuff it" for which we invited about 130 artists. All participators met the day before the opening and put the exhibition together, one took one's piece and chose a proper (free) space. The putting together worked very smooth, and felt more like a good party. As we all know, as an artist one wants a pleasant working climate, and getting rid of the old boring idea that artists compete with each other. The main thing is that good things take place. Everybody gains by that in the long run.

"Besides that, I am fond of the contrast when a thing for example looks funny but actually is psychotic. It's quite ironic that most of the things that are funny often are destructive and burned out."

AO: I think that one could also notice another kind of art as a social event in your works which is about how the viewer crosses the barrier which often is to be found between the art and the viewer, also between the artist and the viewer, with the not unusual result of silence. I think above all on the roundabout where I as a viewer have to step on the pedal for it to begin, or the dancing honey puff who by its charm and subtle humour raises the question "How is it able to dance?" with the viewer.

PG: The honey puff idea itself is actually awful simple and direct, (as if the honey monster has jumped out of the package and dances on as a little ecstasy symbol) maybe is that also the reason for people venturing to approach it. At the time I showed it at Stockholm Art Fair it even occurred that people stepped forward and picked it up (upon which it broke) looking entirely unable to understand my upset question of what they were doing. And even if it's the same question that the audience keep on asking, it's still quite fun. It's probably some kind of straining after effect...




BARNSTOMER, 1997
by Peter Geschwind
AO: Could the humour in your work be considered as a contributed cause for this?

"Children are in most cases fond of my things since they often remind of toys, but they are seldom as innocent as one maybe would wish."

PG: Of course the humour could play an important part since it could be easier to grasp something humorously, not only because of it's disarming effect - as we all know everything becomes easier with humour. I want it to be funny to create something and often make jocular things. Not for the cause of amusing a viewer but more for my own sake. Besides that, I am fond of the contrast when a thing for example looks funny but actually is psychotic. It's quite ironic that most of the things that are funny often are destructive and burned out.

AO: This ambiguousness that you describe here, that something is funny at the same time as it is tragic, is exactly what I find as a recurrent theme in your work, often related to the world of children. Partly in the fact that a lot of the things you do are composed of rebuilt toys partly in the figures you create, for example Candyman or Toilet Paper Mummy. I am thinking about something Lars O Ericsson once wrote just about the reference to children and toys within art, that "The childhood is nevertheless no longer a metaphor for innocence and frankness, but a dramatic playground for familiar tyranny". What is your opinion of that?

PG: Children are in most cases fond of my things since they often remind of toys, but they are seldom as innocent as one maybe would wish. A father at Stockholm Art Fair was smiling at his daughter while she was playing with my roundabout - one steps on a pedal and tiny plaster figures smashes to pieces - and said that the daughter likes roundabouts, and at the same time one could hear a brutal laugh from beneath. He didn't want to understand that his daughter in reality knew exactly what she was doing. A further piece with an obvious relation to the worlds of children is a computer game that I am to show at Svenska Dagbladet's internetgallery this autumn, which consist of a mixture of an animation program for children which is called Amazing Animations and the tv-game Kung Fu Master. By transferring the schedule of motion from Kung Fu Master to the animation program for children, they are still children characters by their outer looks but rebuilt for kickers to the inner. Also the sound comes from the tv-game. Instead of a happy little girl who is out in the nature playing with her dog, which is the contents of the original version of the animation program for children, one catches sight of girl who over and over again kicks a dog at the same time as she yields "Yaah!" with a dark mail voice and the dog howls and barks. I think that I still consider the childhood as a metaphor for innocence, but it may easily capsize.

"When I did the legs in the advisory pillar at Ynglingagatan, an upset neighbour called the police the day after the opening and reported that someone was standing inside the advisory pillar and had been standing there the whole night."

AO: Another of your public installations is Sonic Youth, which is a part of the project Artspace at Arlanda. While looking at the figure I am thinking about a forgotten boy and can't help feeling sorry for him where he sits totally forlorn in his loneliness. He hasn't got that ambiguousness that much of your other works have.

PG: In one way or another I do think he has. If you consider the way he sits and the character of his style, he gives a rather cocky impression. He reminds somewhat of a skater wearing his grungecap and through the tough way he takes his seat in the armchair. Since the original thought wasn't that he should be forgotten I don't regard it to be particularly sad, an interpretation like that is probably more to be found with you as a viewer. Since it sits in a viplounge, intended only for all business class travellers, it doesn't become completely public, the only one to notice it are businessmen on the road. What becomes quite absurd is the fact the he really sits in the viplounge and considering that children are not allowed to stay there, I can imaging that many of those who goes into the space, catches sight of it and reacts by thinking "What the hell is that little fucking bastard doing here?", maybe will it also work as a bad conscience for all those who's only spending their time by working outside the home.

AO: When it comes to exhibiting your work, you do it in many different ways. Partly in spaces intended for art such as galleries and museums, partly outside the gallery space. What's the difference?

PG: Unexpected things occur easier as soon as one situates oneself outside the art space. When I did the legs in the advisory pillar at Ynglingagatan, an upset neighbour called the police the day after the opening and reported that someone was standing inside the advisory pillar and had been standing there the whole night. The police delayed and after repeatedly calls without any result she ended up running down to the pillar herself using a hammer to knock on the legs only to find out whether they belonged to a living person or not. At the same time the police turned up and picked out the legs. Luckily, the whole event was witnessed by a couple of guys in a pizza place nearby who convinced them that the "searcher" was a piece of art that didn't have to follow the police to the custody. At the same time it may be that some things need the gallery, a certain piece of art may not suit in another context than a room where it could be left alone, and I like that to.

AO: Opposite for example art outside the art space where everybody confronts with the art, intentionally or not, for example the legs outside Ynglingagatan, "Konstautomaten" or "Art Circus" - a project where one was given the opportunity to by art by mail-order, exhibitions in a gallery demand that the viewer consciously has to seek for the art. Does that make art in the art space to an élitetistique event?

PG: Hard question... If one is interested by for example football, one figures out all there is to know about it and goes to watch a game. The game doesn't come home and plays in the apartment. If there is something to which one pays a lot of interest it could even be a moment of tension in seeking it up. It must be allowed to be a little like that without being snobbish or in any way boring. If it becomes missionary isn't good either.

AO: You started to exhibit already as a student and when you examined from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts this spring, you had managed to exhibit partly in different places in Sweden, but besides that also in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Copenhagen and Oslo. Has this meant that you have spent a lot of time wondering whether you're a "student" or an "artist"?

PG: Since most of the projects in which I have taken part during my time at school have been situated outside the school, I don't think this has been anything that neither me nor anyone else have paid much attention to. The risk that one exposes oneself as subject to criticism in a different way than in the role as only a student, speaks for oneself. But since this at the same time is something one is aware of, one has to be prepared to deal with criticism that may occur. I can't tell whether this is good or bad but it's probably something which is quite different for different people, but it has turned out to be quite good for me. It has brought with it that I have had access to a studio, equipment and study financing. But since I first attended Konstfack for three years and after that changed to Mejan for further four years, towards the end I considered the education to become unnecessary long and managed to quit a year earlier by allowing me credits from Konstfack.

"Artist as a concept is a rather diffuse concept to which I actually don't pay any attention. In one way it's only a word to easier explain what one is doing. If a carpenter says he's a carpenter, people tend to understand what he does."

AO: This inevitably takes us to the question when one becomes an artist?

PG: At the time when one in one way or another works with art, which as we all know is a rather wide concept, if one compares it with for example music, where it is much easier to guide oneself. One may like disco, another one techno, someone who likes techno may like jungle, another one drum'n bass. As we all know it often arises confusion while saying that one is speaking of art, and everybody thinks of different things. I don't know whether it would work to devide art in the same way, but it would be nice if it did. Artist as a concept is a rather diffuse concept to which I actually don't pay any attention. In one way it's only a word to easier explain what one is doing. If a carpenter says he's a carpenter, people tend to understand what he does.

AO: I was thinking about your examination exhibition at Mejan that was called "Moving Trash", which I think characterises many of your works. Again, considering the fact that you have been exhibiting frequently and begun a career before you had finished your education, was it nevertheless important for you to set up a profile?

PG: Before the examination exhibition I spent a lot of time thinking of what I should do, whether I should make something completely new or use the things I had already done. The more I thought about it and considering the fact that it is a student exhibition, which is to be regarded as a rendering of what one has been working with during the time at school, I thought it would be rather fun to use both new and old works, and besides that perceive how they would work together. I didn't have any ambition what so ever to set up a profile, but I suppose that I actually chose some things that had approximately the same expression, so it probably turned out to be some kind of homogeneity...

AO: Of what importance is the viewer, or the critic?

PG: At a first phase one works with something and then, if one is feeling satisfied with it, the thought of it to meet a viewer could work as a kick of adrenaline for one to sharpen up and concentrate even a little more to get it together thoroughly and see if it really works. To show something one has made also involves to get a distance to it oneself, to self become an outsider with the abbility to find new possibilities, which could be difficult while one is totally absorbed by something. It is of course tremendously interesting when someone reacts upon what one is doing. Even though one has already made what one had thought, it suddenly occurs something more.

AO: To return to the fact and considering that you have been exhibiting frequently and has gained a lot of attention the last three or four years - some of your works have even been showed in several different places, for example the roundabout, versions of the plastic tube and the jeans legs - I wonder if you could be sensible of a fear of repeating yourself and get caught in an expression?

PG: Yes, of course could it be like that. It is at the same time a balance. I find it a matter of course to show something one has made several times. An exhibition opportunity doesn't always reach a lot of people, in that case it could be good to get the opportunity to show it in a further place. But I guess that someone has to draw the limit somewhere, for ones own sake.

"It easily becomes rather kinky. One may even get a sceptical treatment at Butterick's if one asks too much about police uniforms, dog shit and fried eggs..."

AO: I suppose that the materials you are using play an important part just when it comes to very different works. You have among other things mentioned candy bags, jeans, cereal packages and remote controlled toyrats. How do you find them?

PG: I use what's around and what in one way or another means something to me, it could be a certain label or thing. It easily occurs absurd situations while one is shopping material. One is careful with details, and knows exactly what one is looking for, at the same time as it is obvious that one is going to use the thing one has bought for a different purpose than aimed. It easily becomes rather kinky. One may even get a sceptical treatment at Butterick's if one asks too much about police uniforms, dog shit and fried eggs...

AO: Until now we have been talking about art as a social event, the ability of art to mediate feelings and to amuse. What is the function of art?

PG: That is also something that one asks oneself repeatedly, but it's totally dependent upon who is doing what so I guess it's even good to keep it an open question. I think that it among other things could work as a forum for alternative ways of looking at things.~