ARTIST CLOSEUP
INTERVIEW KATJA PETER
Katja Peter was born in 1969 in Switzerland and started to study Graphic Design at the School of Contemporary Art in Zurich in 1986. During her studies, she worked for Warner Bros. and was stunned by the illustrations e.g. for Dick Tracy. She got hooked on the cartoonlike illustration style and was keen to dive deeper in to it. Shortly after she graduated in 1991, she found her own company, VISUAL DOPE, specializing in branding systems, illustrations and general visual concepts. Beside the commercial work, she always pursued various art & music projects. She loves to play drums as well as piano. Eventually the entrepreneur inside lead her to this approach of handling her art work, compared to the traditional symbiosis between an artist and a gallery. With the founding of the brand MOKSHAMAN®, she realized a long held desire to produce her own athleisure products, thus her illustrations are now portable and wearable. Occasionally, she does participate in group exhibitions.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I’ve loved to draw since I was a kid, and was deeply impressed by the power of images, signs and colors from early on. When we drove somewhere, I was fascinated by the brands on the trucks and tried to figure out what the company stood for. So I decided to become a graphic designer at the age of twelve. I started my graphic design studies in Zurich, Switzerland in 1986. During my studies, I worked for Warner Bros. and was stunned by Dick Tracy’s illustrations. I got hooked on the cartoon=like illustration style and was keen to dive deeper into it.
Shortly after I finished my studies in 1991, I founded my own company, VISUAL DOPE which specialized in branding systems, illustrations, and general visual concepts. Beside the commercial work, I always pursued my own art and music projects.
Over the decades, I’ve created a lot of love brands for the Visual Dope clients, hence I couldn’t resist creating my own brands within my humble possibilities. With the founding of the brand MOKSHAMAN®, I realized a long-held desire to produce my own athleisure products. Thus, my illustrations are now portable and wearable. I’m convinced that our wealth is in our health, so I love to spread a good mood vibe. I finally found my cheerful tribe.
Eventually, the entrepreneur inside me lead me to this approach of handling my art work, compared to the traditional way of an artist / gallery symbiosis.
Another brand I developed to create usable products from my art work is DIODECO®, bright delight. This brand stands for unique and vibrant LED pics, to brighten up people’s rooms with the mandala-like flower compositions, mainly from the Floroscope series.”
What inspires you?
“Honestly, I’m deeply moved by mother nature. I love the infinite creativity in regards to colors, shapes and functions, the fantastic appearance as well as the highly organized, mathematical principals lying underneath it all. Basically, my whole artwork is an homage or tribute to the biodiversity.
To avoid getting stuck in decorative art, I’m regularly stunned by the very common human attitude of hypocrisy. The ability of an ego-based mindset to gaslight is very inspiring for me too, hence it leads to more psychologically or politically challenging artwork. Artworks like the narcissist‘s keyboard may appear superficial, yet it is based on very in-depth professional research.”
“In other words, if the world tries to hide or conceal something very fiercely, I display exactly that. And vice versa, if nature shows me something strong, I twist it to something else, like I do within the kaleidoscope based series FLOROSCOPE. Since I grew up without any TV or cartoons, I spent a lot of my time with a kaleidoscope. That gave me endless pics of one single theme. This enormous universe has kept me inspired for decades.”
“The series FLOROSCOPE started out as BIOLOGOS in 1991, therein I only focused on body parts. Then, I continued with MASSIVE MOSS, wherein I worked with pics from the moss landscapes from SLIGO, Ireland, hence the name MASSIVE MOSS.”
“Of course I try to balance it all out with the radically realistic vector portraits, wherein I am focused on showing a face as precise as possible the way it appears to me, using only a very reduced color range, with no graduation. This work series I call IDENTITY. I am fascinated by the very tiny details that makes a character, since we all have two eyes, a nose and a mouth. So what exactly makes the difference? Usually it takes me two days to work this out. When a portrait starts to radiate & vibrate I consider it as finished. Within Lamborghini Countach, I tried to catch the very archaic man‘s dream of flying and the importance of speed & competition. Personally, I do not like this car but I am deeply impressed of the designer Bertone’s ability to realize a vision to this extend. It was a lot of work but I am very grateful for this kind of work.
In regards to vector illustrations: Under my brand MOKSHAMAN®, I created a whole collection for a Chinese Jazz Singer, wherein I combined all the specially developed vector illustrations to roll out on variant products like notebooks, drawstring bags, T-Shirts and what have you. That was really fantastic. I love to make an individual clip art collection and after this tremendous initial work I start to play around with it like a kid. I think it is important for artists, to never lose their playful curious side, therefor you avoid getting old too soon. Another vector art work is called la pura bellezza della dissoluzione or Pure beauty of disillusion, wherein I used a photo of the U.S. based artist Mark Sobcak. It took me 4 years to finish this piece. I produced it on a fabric-like Material with LED stripes behind. With a remote control, you can vary the temperature of the light from 2800° to 6500° kelvin, which has a tremendous effect on the colours. The light makes the colours, what we all know, yet it is stunning to see this phenomenon time and again. This piece is a series of 11, I sold 9 so far, the same goes for another piece called Les drus et la verte. One day in the early evening in autumn I caught this scene in the French mountains with my camera and decided to do a vector illustration, which took me years to finish but at the end it, was worth the pain too.
By the way, I think it is important as an artist to have an overview in regards your work and invest some hours in the documentation of your work in form of a book, a sort of catalog where you write down the year, production technique, producer, collector, series number, size etc. to keep track of your art work. It means you take yourself and your work serious in a healthy manner, and just in case you leave this meat suit one day, it would be much more attractive for a collector or even a museum to take care of the heritage. In the work series called BLIND COPY , I did respond to an interesting experience regarding a copyright and moral right issue - in my most creative way. The cited characters and the corresponding dummy text are walking around spunky in the mine field between inspiration and imitation. In my humble opinion, creativity munchers, thieves, tricksters, cheaters, liars, copy cats, haters and similar king-size gross characters, who try to take advantage of the generous spirit of artists, really deserve a binge creative punch in their fake face.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“As I mentioned, over the past 30 years, I have pursue different art series, and they all vary in the technique. I use Photoshop and other software for the floral work, Illustrator for the vector portraits, and Indesign or mixed media for a series called POLITUR. Politur means finish, polish, shine. The word relates to polite as well as politics. I love to play around with existing brands, words or quotes and twist them in a way that you need a certain attention span to get the point. You have to let it sink in, otherwise you miss the conclusion. Thus this is not for everybody. Onlookers might get amused or offended, but I think an artist is not here to people please but to make them aware of certain correlations...
My underlaying message? Check your ego. Do it twice a day. Evolve. Relax. Take nothing personal and everything with a grain of salt. Keep it pure, deep, strong and simple. Always move with an open mind and a light heart. Remember, we all be dust sooner or later… while the art work still remains and maybe will be considered as stunning one day or very ahead of time.”
How would you describe your work?
“Colourful, uplifting, irritating, sometimes in your face, other times like a lenticular pic. You will see what is inside yourself or discover other aspects further down the line. Let me mention there that I take full responsability for what I display but not for what others may see.”
Which artists influence you most?
“In the tradional field I appreciate the work of Ferdinand Hodler a lot, he was painting up to his last breath. Everybody around him died, his wifes, parents, children and friends. He had a purpose that kept him a life, litteraly. He was not afraid to display what he saw, e.g. some really pink mountains! Early on I was impressed by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol due to the reduced pop art style. One of my favorite artists today is the swiss based artist Michel Casarramona due to his very unique style and excellent work even embracing highly developed typographic skills. Really fantastic stuff!”
What is your creative process like?
“It usually starts light hearted, just a tingling, a spark to get me even started. As I move on it might become a bumpy, uncomfortable road and it gets even very painful towards the finish line, to the point, where frankly, I wish I never had this idea in the beginning. Maybe it boils down to no pain no gain. I am very grateful to go trough those processes even if it is really exhausting sometimes.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“Well, I am old school. My personal advice to my alter ego is: Work seriously and constantly on your skills. Be resourceful. Evolve. Make people aware of issues. Show them what they do not dare to see. Do not sell out. Please do not try to please. Binge create. Make epic stuff that stands the test of time. Unfortunately, artists always have been and always will be used to manipulate people. They get pushed If they fit the narrative, or they even get chosen to do so. Most of all the others get silenced, shadow banned or just ignored. When big money is involved to push an artist, I get skeptical.
In my humble opinion, an artist should always be and always stay a free spirit, a system buster, a fundamentally independent human being with a quick wit, an open loving heart, a free soul and skilled hands.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“THE VISITORS from Ragnar Kjartansson in the Migros Museum for contemporary art, Zurich and The Mystery of Banksy in Zurich Oerlikon.”
