Peter Horvath is an assemblage and new media artist. Embracing digital technologies at the birth of the Web, he created audio/video narratives through selective editing of film footage and the use of his early collages. His new work similarly focuses on deconstructing and recontextualizing imagery through assemblage, drawing from personal and found materials.
Merging street ephemera, movie posters, photographs, ink, acrylic and spray paint, Horvath creates densely layered narrative assemblages. Reflecting on his fascination with media consumption, cultural icons and urban decay, these portrait works share an affinity with the Décollage of the 1960s Nouveau Réalistes Mimmo Rotella and Jacques Villeglé.
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 forever."
Peter Horvath's work is included in permanent and private collections internationally, including the Nion McEvoy collection, the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s permanent collection, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the recipient of commissions from Rhizome.org at The New Museum, NYC (2005) and Turbulence.org New Radio and Performing Arts, Boston (2004). He has received numerous grants from The Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council for his new media work.
Horvath exhibits globally, including the Rise Art Prize Exhibition in London, England; the Whitney Museum of American Art‘s Artport (NYC); the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City); the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec City, Canada) and the FILE Electronic Language International Festival (São Paulo, Brazil).
