Artist,
6/26/05, polaroid montage, 6.562 x 5.875"

 

JOHN O'REILLY : CONTRADICTIONS To Rimbaud- Verlaine
March17 - April  18
Opening Reception Friday: March 17th 5-7pm

For Imediate Release

In his photomontages John O'Reilly creates exquisite narratives using a black and white Polaroid camera. His material sources are everything from found images, and art historical references to studio portraits of his surrounding environment and his own self-portraits. In his upcoming exhibition Contradictions: To Rimbaud - Verlaine at Howard Yezerski Gallery O'Reilly takes on the role of curator as he selects works that span several years and combines them with his most recent montages. The exhibition will feature twenty montages that reference the influence of the tumultuous contradictory relationship between the two poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.

The lives of Rimbaud and Verlaine are fused together in poetic myth, seemingly entangled in one contradiction after another. One was wild while the other was the well mannered, one a dreamer and the other a realist, their combustible relationship ended when Verlaine tried to shoot Rimbaud after Rimbaud tried to end their highly passionate relationship. O'Reilly who is continually enchanted by their relationship often sees him as both poets. The founding image of the exhibition As Verlaine Rimbaud is O'Reilly placing his body in the picture as both the poetic dreamer Verlaine, and the realist Rimbaud. O'Reilly's strong emotional identification with the composite of the two poets results in an acceptance of the expression of contradiction and ambiguity that is in his own montages. "In art my use of montage allows me to create fantasy worlds that are fused into reality by the medium of photography".

O'Reilly's work has been included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial as well as exhibitions in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. He photographs can be found in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art; Bowdoin College, the DeCordova Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Rose Art Museum, and the Worcester Art Museum. O'Reilly was the recent recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant.
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