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| Jack Reilly's early abstract painting (1978-1979) reflected various influences of prominent artists of the time including Frank Stella, Elsworth Kelly, Ron Davis, Jules Olitski,
and Trevor Bell. Each of these painters dealt with aspects of structure,
color and ambiguous pictorial space; elements that converged in Reilly's
early abstract paintings. By extracting and redefining certain concepts prevalent in contemporary
abstract art, his work commented on numerous formal and pictorial
issues of the era. Combining illusionary space with hard edge and color field painting, Reilly created a unique synthesis
of geometric abstraction and illusionary pictorial depth, which was referred to as "Abstract Illusionism." In April 1979 Reilly's
work was exhibited in his first solo show at the Molly Barnes Gallery
in Los Angeles. USC Fisher Museum's curator, Donald Brewer included
Reilly's painting in a major museum exhibition entitled "The
Reality of Illusion," an international survey of "Trompe
l' oeil" in both abstract and representational art. The exhibition
debuted at the Denver Art Museum and traveled to museums throughout the United
States for two years. This series of museum and gallery exhibitions defined Reilly as one of the origional artists of the 1970s Abstract Illusionism movement. Reilly's paintings uniquely challenge traditional concepts of illusionary pictorial space in painting. By abandoning common methods used to create visual depth in two-dimensional art, perspective is replaced with the appearance of multiple light sources, resulting in a visual paradox as linear imagery appears to be suspended in front of, as opposed to behind (or inside of) the canvas surface. |
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©
1978-2017 Jack Reilly |
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