Horkay's Museum Factory series combines original drawn and painted images, appropriated masterpieces, photographs, artists' signatures and commercial logos. These elements are digitally assembled, i.e., collaged, to create a single, layered moment reflecting different places and times.

This work is post pop, i.e., post modern pop art. Whereas Warhol took moments from popular culture and turned them into history, Horkay takes history and turns it into a moment, as though the past millennium was a monolithic unit of time.

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Horkay Istvan

In today’s world, computers are used to simplify our lives. However, as an artist, I find computers and the digital world to be tools that must be taken seriously, because they inherently reflect the artist and his work. If my work is considered in its mathematical and digital realm, then we can see the duality of the human created art and the binary basis of digitizing.

It is of the greatest importance that the humanity of the artists reveals itself truly and is not overshadowed by the technology. It is within these considerations that I come to a dilemma where I must find artistic parameters within the unlimited power of technology.

When my work is saved as a psd file in Adobe Photoshop, I am at liberty to change, alter, or rework my pieces at will. My pieces, as stored files, remain alive and not complete with the resoluteness of, for example, a painting. Therein lies the challenge of finding closure and the end point to all the pieces.

While the technology poses challenges, I find my expression in the limitless possibilities of producing my art in any shape or size allowable. Having this digital world as my artist’s tools allows me to cross-reference literature and poetry with imagery.

It is within the layering and the cross-referencing that the artist’s character and soul emerge. To me, each layer is another virtual poem laid upon another one. My works contained hundreds of layers, each seperate as it’s own poem, yet each connect to all as a whole. My goal is create a new genre of digital art, what I call “virtual poems”.

Horkay Istvan