If Rene Magritte hadn’t already claimed “The Treachery of Images” as a title 80 years ago, Walead Beshty could have put it to good use.

In his Hirshhorn exhibit opening this week, the London-born, Los Angeles-based sculptor and photo-anachronist revives cameraless techniques developed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray decades ago to create mesmerizing patterns of color.

The way Beshty manipulates his photosensitive paper before exposing it to light determines the prismatic geometry of the resulting prints. They’re like paper-cutout snowflakes made in a darkroom.