In his collage imbued mixed media assemblages, Peter Horvath invokes an improvisational jazz like visual cacophony, deconstructing and recontextualizing imagery drawn from personal and found materials.
Merging street ephemera, movie posters, photographs, ink, acrylic and spray paint, his densely layered assemblage portraits reflect his fascination with media consumption, cultural icons, urban decay and modern day culture.
Influenced by the décollage of the 1960s Nouveau Réalistes Mimmo Rotella and Jacques Villeglé, his work focuses on deconstructing and recontextualising imagery, drawing from personal and found materials and showing how life has itself become an assemblage of consumer products and cultural reference.
Using imagery of friends, family and celebrated public figures, Horvath obscures his central characters with peeling, torn paper fragments and paint, frenetically surrounding a stilled subject. "When I began making these works I considered how we have become a society obsessed with aging, clinging to, and in pursuit of our emblems of youth. The images of the people I choose for these portraits have a strength and vitality - I place them among the wreckage of crumbling, entropic elements - suggesting nothing lasts for ever.”
