Horváth János Milán szerk.: Horváth János Milán kiállítása (Kaposvár, 2009)

His first individual exhibition was held in 1975 in Kaposvár. (TIT Galéria). Since then, in the course of his over twenty-five exhibitions, he has been invited to such noted galleries as the one in Virovitica (Croatia), the City Museum (1981 ), Helikon Galéria in Budapest (1984), Műhely Galéria in Pécs (1995), Gallery of Lancaster (the USA), Vaszary képtár in Kaposvár (2006), and Helikon Kastélymúzeum in Keszthely (2008). He has been a regular participant of the various national exhibitions as well as the collective exhibitions of artists from Somogy county. He has been a member of the Artistic Fund and its successor the National Association of Hungarian Creative Artists since 1979. As a painter, he is connected to the inspiring master with basically two concepts: Colourism and Symbolism, the latter characterizing Rippl-Rónai's period in Paris. This clinging can be felt in the deeper layers rather than in the surface as his pictures are powerful, individual and consistent. As his starting point, he relies on the endeavours of Expressionism and Surrealism in the first few decades of the 20th century. He does not search for any connection with contemporary artistic trends; as a painter, he refrains from the current whims of fashion. He treats the picture, 'imago' in a classical way; he focuses on the 'human'. His main concern is the general message through the momentary, the particular. He can be described as a 'visual image-conscious'artist, someone who more or less keeps or at least employs the classical system of dimension and perspective as a starting point; his concept of view is associated with only this rather than the events one can visually perceive from the outside world. His figures depicted in a composition can not be identified lacking a personality of their own, much rather they can be interpreted as a personalization of emotions. Their clothing or the lack of it reveals it.The latter partly emphasizes sexual identity, partly the allegory of nakedness or purity. The garments worn by these figures are timeless, rather more archaic than fashionable. They do not represent any age, they are not set in definite social relations or layers, and do not define their owner, either. It is only their level of civilization and circle that one can gather from them. Principally, they can be described as European conveying the idea of an endowed state. One can not get any closer to them as the figures themselves lack individual character. Their abstract faces occasionally with a grotesque impression look like a mask not expressing any emotions. The painter is not intending to keep away from them, in fact, his main goal is to define them visually in an adequate way. Only, he refrains from depicting them through mimics which is far from his set of devices. Emotions are expressed by gestures, movement, body position, and a complex but noticeably unemotional relationship between the characters of the composition. Due to this method their portrayal seems much more apathetic, impartial; emotions appear in a pseudo-rational, objective way. The employment of gestures with a deeper meaning, relations between the figures and the integration of colorit make it possible to create a well-refined scale that helps define from a documentative and descriptive point of view of an outsider certain spiritual motifs or depth-psychological events much more precisely than through mimics or the depiction of passionate motions. Consequently, in the pictures of János Milán Horváth, each motif, figure, motion, arrangement and colour has a symbolic meaning. We are not able to locate the setting of his scenes - if the visual description of the projected inner thoughts can be named a 'scene'at all.