John
O'Reilly, Pieta, 1995, Polaroid Photograph, 2 7/8 x 3
3/4''
Marsden
Hartley, Badly Bruised-Who Is He, 1940, Pen and black
ink on paper, 10 1/2 x 8, Courtesy of Bates College Musuem of
Art
John
O'Reilly
Marsden
Hartley
Two
Kindred Spirits
Curated
By Trevor Fairbrother
October
14 - November 15, 2011
Opening
Reception: Friday October 14, 2011
Howard Yezerski Gallery is pleased to present Two Kindred Spirits,
an exhibition of new photomontages by John O'Reilly, which will
be hung with drawings by the American modernist Marsden Hartley,
opening Friday October 14th. Trevor Fairbrother, the guest curator,
has selected over twenty pictures by O'Reilly, which will be displayed
alongside eleven works from the Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection
of Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine.
O'Reilly's photomontages, like traditional collages, are unique
works of art. Often intricate and labor-intensive, they combine
fragments from diverse sources, joined together as a new visual
statement. Some passages in a given work by O'Reilly shift seamlessly
from one element to the next, while others jar the viewer with
their quick and sometimes astonishing juxtapositions. His source
materials include images cut from magazines and books as well
as an array of photographs he has taken, in the studio or out
of doors.
All manner of mythological figures and art historical personages
crop up in O'Reilly's art, as do historical figures, including
the dancer Nijinsky and the artists Dürer, Eakins, and Picasso.
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) became the focus of a new series in
2008. O'Reilly's interest in him was two-fold. First there was
the exceptional art, which ranged from lively, cubist-inflected
abstractions made in Germany in the 1910s to the stark and exhilarating
views of Maine's rugged terrain, produced in later life. Second,
there was the biography of the man himself, who, despite his pioneering
connections with such avant-gardists as Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude
Stein, had an ultimately distressing trajectory. Hartley died
poor, solitary, and closeted; he asked that his last remaining
drawings be given to the museum in Lewiston, his birthplace. Since
the late 1970s he has been admired not only as a pioneer modernist
but also as a bravely original artist who articulated an attraction
to the male body in some of his work.
A number of O'Reilly's new works feature his photographs of the
giant rocks in the wilderness of Dogtown, an abandoned community
on the outskirts of Gloucester, Mass. Hartley, who painted there
in 1931 and 1934, wrote "[Dogtown] is forsaken and majestically
lonely, as if nature had at last formed one spot where she can
live for herself alone." In some of his photomontages O'Reilly
brings together an artistic family for himself; in others he imagines
a place where he can be with kindred spirits. Hartley embodies
for him a New England soul who embraced the Transcendentalism
of Emerson and Thoreau and the upright fearlessness of Lincoln.
Hartley and O'Reilly share a passion for the inner dialogue. They
seek to reconcile the trials
of life with the dreams and ideals evoked by art, literature,
and systems of faith and worship.
John O'Reilly has lived and worked in Worcester, Mass., since
1964. His art has been appeared in many solo and group shows in
North America including the 1995 Biennial Exhibition of the Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York. Nine years ago the Addison Gallery
of American Art, Andover, Mass., hosted a retrospective of his
work in conjunction with Klaus Kertess's notable monograph John
O'Reilly: Assemblies of Magic (Twin Palms Publishers, 2002). His
work is in numerous public and private collections, including
the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art.
For further information please contact Howard Yezerski Gallery
617.262.0550 Tuesday - Saturday 10-5:30pm
