John O'Reilly: John O'Reilly

For the past 40 years, Boston area artist John O’Reilly has constructed complex and intimate photographic “montages.” Using a Polaroid camera, he re-photographs images from art history, found photographic albums and gay pornography. He cuts and pastes them with Polaroids he takes of himself, his home and his studio — collaging history, art and fantasy. This exhibition consists of eight montages, each a portrayal of a character from literature. Themes that O’Reilly has explored over and over again – beauty, age, ecstasy, death, love, art, artifice – are layered into psychological portraits of characters from Henry James, Thomas Mann and the Iliad. This is O’Reilly’s sixth solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery.