John O'Reilly: Tears

For more than twenty-five years, John O’Reilly has montaged re-photographed images taken from art history books and pornography into beautiful and haunting narratives that manipulate space and time. His most recent group of pictures, “Tears,” is his most abstract, and perhaps, most interesting. Figures have been replaced by shadows. Bodies are torn apart and re-joined in horrible contortions. Space is fractured, reflected and layered. Unquestionably, these are visions of a loss of self — open to interpretation is whether it is through ecstasy, or death.