Peter Ivancovich is a fine art photographer based in Los Angeles. A longstanding Hollywood local, his practice embodies the spirit of cinema while turning a maverick’s wry eye on the industry which monopolises his neighbourhood. He defamiliarizes material sourced from threatened local prop, fabric, backdrop and taxidermy stores, placing them in tableaux at once uncannily real and dreamily artificial. Collections such as “NATURAL/WONDER” (2018) and “DREAM/LAND” (2021-2024) use a studied kitsch to probe themes of illusion and fantasy, revelling in queer joy and blurring the lines between ugliness and beauty, wonder and malice, life and death, and nightmares and dreams. 

While Ivancovich is situated unmistakably in the story of American Pop Art, he also embraces a tradition of Los Angeles-based eccentricity and is open about how his own biography bleeds into his aesthetic. After overcoming a debilitating illness, he was impelled to begin his practice later in life. A longstanding collector of art and antiques, he uses many of his own collectibles in his compositions, and shoots either in his home studio or on his garden sandscape. Having cut his teeth as a fashion photographer in the 1990s, many of his pieces are fashion-adjacent and affectionately allude to that world. 

Ivancovich’s work is held in private collections and has been exhibited in several galleries, including in his first solo show at Fabrik Projects in 2018. He has gained an underground following, working semi-reclusively around Hollywood over the last eight years to build an exuberant, camp and decidedly queer aesthetic, which he is now finally presenting to the world in full.