John O'Reilly: Assemblies of Magic

Meditations on space, art, war, death, and religion merge with the homoerotic in John O’Reilly’s intensely personal photo transformations. For this artist, montage has proved the richest medium for personal allegory, and the formal and symbolic evolution of O’Reilly’s work corresponds to his own awakening self-discovery. His working methods of cutting and pasting mirror the energy inherent in deconstructing and reconstructing the psyche. Alternately, the physical merging of iconic Others enables their psychic incorporation into the Self. Over twenty-five years of part-time employment as an art therapist have rendered O’Reilly equally interested in art and psychology and willing to use his deepest obsessions, fetishes, and fears as source material for his tiny assemblies of magic.