The Collage Circus is brought to you by Peter Lewis, the artist behind WarpArt.
Visually remixed for maximum juxtaposed effect, Victorian culture is amputated from its native context and grafted onto new hosts. Sometimes the resulting collage has a Deep Meaning, sometimes it's just epic nonsense.
Have fun deciding which is which!
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"Peter Lewis makes extraordinary collages from the detritus of popular culture. He chops up magazine images and rearranges them into remarkable blends of surreal humour and socially critical images.
Like the great Dada artists John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch, Lewis creates photomontages that seem sometimes politically charged, yet often he is content to let the absurdity of his content defeat itself. Titles such as Dr Octopus And The House Of Butterflies suggest the artist's delight in a "B" movie aesthetic.
He has fun with beauties from the Golden Age of Hollywood with images when he sanctifies "Saint Betty" [Grable] or dives into Veronica Lake. But these images seem a little too easy when compared to the devillish humour of The Alchemy of Chocolate.
In a series of black and white prints and montages of Victorian engravings, Lewis follows an artist who is surely another of his heroes, Max Ernst, by creating what is arguably a further incident in the graphic novel Une Semaine De Bonte, set on the streets of Dunedin.
Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, New Zealand. 18 March 2004
"I
first saw the work of Peter
Lewis several years ago when
he sent me some of his work
in the mail. I was amazed
at the 'magnificent resplendence'
of his compositions.
Peter is perhaps the most
prolific collage artist I
know of. His works resemble
a kaleidoscope of color with
swirling images cascading
in all directions, defying
gravity and challenging the
viewer to make sense of this
topsy-turvy world that his
compositions evoke."
Winston Smith, Collage
Artist / Illustrator, San
Francisco,
2004 |