PAIRINGS
Peter Goché + Mitchell Squire, 2019
At the 2018 World Architecture Festival in RAI Amsterdam, there were discussions by the industry’s most influential figures addressing what one referred to as “a profound crisis of imagination”. Such conversations, however, are not reserved only for the world stage, as they often emerge from unlikely places where it is unexpected that thoughts about world culture and design will reach fever pitch. The subject of this exhibition is, in part, one such place, central Iowa, where architecture professors Peter Goché and Mitchell Squire have engaged such a dialogue for over two decades, since first meeting at the firm Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture in 1994. From those early conversations, which took place between the firm’s drawing boards or while on too-long lunch breaks at a coffee shop or dive bar, they both embarked on separate paths to develop uncompromising, multidisciplinary practices, each in his own distinctive way, but which both seem doggedly embedded in an exploration and sentient navigation of their chosen mediums: Goché, the drawing; Squire, the artifact.
Currently teaching side by side in the studio sequence of the architecture program at Iowa State University, they each bring to Maple Street Construct a select project from their Fall 2018 academic studios, to be situated on either side of a tableau of works from their own art practices. The whole represents an assemblage of contemporary currents and both they and their students’ attempt to make sense of matter, making, the instrumentality of architecture and the agency of the architect’s imagination.
Students:
Colleen De Matta, Christopher Perez, Zheng Yang
Sirina Reed, Zihan Yu, Hancheng Zhang, Wentao Zhong
Show Sponsor:
Benson Brewery
Peter Goché + Mitchell Squire, 2019
At the 2018 World Architecture Festival in RAI Amsterdam, there were discussions by the industry’s most influential figures addressing what one referred to as “a profound crisis of imagination”. Such conversations, however, are not reserved only for the world stage, as they often emerge from unlikely places where it is unexpected that thoughts about world culture and design will reach fever pitch. The subject of this exhibition is, in part, one such place, central Iowa, where architecture professors Peter Goché and Mitchell Squire have engaged such a dialogue for over two decades, since first meeting at the firm Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture in 1994. From those early conversations, which took place between the firm’s drawing boards or while on too-long lunch breaks at a coffee shop or dive bar, they both embarked on separate paths to develop uncompromising, multidisciplinary practices, each in his own distinctive way, but which both seem doggedly embedded in an exploration and sentient navigation of their chosen mediums: Goché, the drawing; Squire, the artifact.
Currently teaching side by side in the studio sequence of the architecture program at Iowa State University, they each bring to Maple Street Construct a select project from their Fall 2018 academic studios, to be situated on either side of a tableau of works from their own art practices. The whole represents an assemblage of contemporary currents and both they and their students’ attempt to make sense of matter, making, the instrumentality of architecture and the agency of the architect’s imagination.
Students:
Colleen De Matta, Christopher Perez, Zheng Yang
Sirina Reed, Zihan Yu, Hancheng Zhang, Wentao Zhong
Show Sponsor:
Benson Brewery
Photos Courtesy of Cameron Campbell
About the Artists:
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 staged exhibitions of his 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 and the Waldemar A. Schmidt Art Gallery. 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, Goché holds both B. Arch and M. Arch degrees in architectural studies from Iowa State University. Goché has presented papers and lectured on his creative practice and scholarship at many conferences and cultural institutions throughout North America and Western Europe. His understanding and sensibilities regarding spatial experience and ethno-specific design stem from an agrarian upbringing and ongoing research in art, architecture and anthropology at Iowa State University. Equally, his travel throughout North America, Europe and the Czech Republic has nurtured his interest in human beings, their practices and the ways they occupy and perceive space.
www.goche.com
www.blackcontemporary.org
Mitchell Squire is an artist and educator whose practice encompasses architecture, visual art, and the study of material culture. His work employs techniques of assemblage and informational strategies of collection and archival presentations, and focuses on the sociopolitical complexity of material and immaterial artifacts. He has mounted solo exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation (NYC), White Cube London, the Des Moines Art Center, and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art / Carver Bank (Omaha), and has had his work included in signature group exhibitions at Richard Gray Gallery (Chicago) and Lesley Heller Gallery (New York). He has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Maine), Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency (Michigan), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Alberta, Canada), and Cannonball Miami. He has also been an invited participant in educational programs at Museum of Modern Art (NY), New Museum (NY), and Pérez Art Museum Miami. His works appear in major public and private collections worldwide, including the permanent collections of the Des Moines Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Squire currently holds the position of Professor of Architecture at Iowa State University, where he took both B.Arch and M.Arch degrees. He has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley (2012, 2015), the University of Michigan (2009), and the University of Minnesota (2000). He twice received honors for his teaching from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA); the New Faculty Teaching Award (2005) and the Creative Achievement Award (2009) for his course “Craft and Crafty Action: on the Relationship between Creativity and Mischief”.
www.mitchellsquire.com
Colleen De Matta, Christopher Perez, Zheng Yang, Sirina Reed, Zihan Yu, Hancheng Zhang, and Wentao Zhong are architecture students at the College of Design at Iowa State University.
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 staged exhibitions of his 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 and the Waldemar A. Schmidt Art Gallery. 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, Goché holds both B. Arch and M. Arch degrees in architectural studies from Iowa State University. Goché has presented papers and lectured on his creative practice and scholarship at many conferences and cultural institutions throughout North America and Western Europe. His understanding and sensibilities regarding spatial experience and ethno-specific design stem from an agrarian upbringing and ongoing research in art, architecture and anthropology at Iowa State University. Equally, his travel throughout North America, Europe and the Czech Republic has nurtured his interest in human beings, their practices and the ways they occupy and perceive space.
www.goche.com
www.blackcontemporary.org
Mitchell Squire is an artist and educator whose practice encompasses architecture, visual art, and the study of material culture. His work employs techniques of assemblage and informational strategies of collection and archival presentations, and focuses on the sociopolitical complexity of material and immaterial artifacts. He has mounted solo exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation (NYC), White Cube London, the Des Moines Art Center, and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art / Carver Bank (Omaha), and has had his work included in signature group exhibitions at Richard Gray Gallery (Chicago) and Lesley Heller Gallery (New York). He has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Maine), Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency (Michigan), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Alberta, Canada), and Cannonball Miami. He has also been an invited participant in educational programs at Museum of Modern Art (NY), New Museum (NY), and Pérez Art Museum Miami. His works appear in major public and private collections worldwide, including the permanent collections of the Des Moines Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Squire currently holds the position of Professor of Architecture at Iowa State University, where he took both B.Arch and M.Arch degrees. He has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley (2012, 2015), the University of Michigan (2009), and the University of Minnesota (2000). He twice received honors for his teaching from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA); the New Faculty Teaching Award (2005) and the Creative Achievement Award (2009) for his course “Craft and Crafty Action: on the Relationship between Creativity and Mischief”.
www.mitchellsquire.com
Colleen De Matta, Christopher Perez, Zheng Yang, Sirina Reed, Zihan Yu, Hancheng Zhang, and Wentao Zhong are architecture students at the College of Design at Iowa State University.