Peter Halley
40 Watts, 2017
Acrylic, Day-Glo acrylic, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas
201 × 196 × 10 cm
“I see my paintings as diagramming the way space is laid out in our culture – from city grids to microchips.”
— Peter Halley
Reconsidering the work of Piet Mondrian, Josef Albers, and Donald Judd, Peter Halley employs geometric abstraction to develop his unique approach to painting, defining his renowned iconic style.
Encouraged by New York’s intense urban environment and the burgeoning flow of information generated by computer technology since the 1980s, Halley conceived a formal vocabulary of squares, rectangles, and bars as coded referents to the pervasiveness of geometry in modern life.
The artist uses bright and saturated industrial paints and materials such as DayGlo, metallic, and pearlescent. He incorporates Roll-a-Tex, a paint additive, to give the paintings a rough and textured surface. Halley refers to these paints as a “hyper-realization” of the chromatic ambitions of modernism, viewing his vibrant palette as a symbol of “low-budget mysticism,” deliberately contrasting traditional artistic norms.
Masterfully balancing the delicacy of Minimalism with a vibrant color palette, Halley emphasizes the purity of pigments and the tactile quality of technique, exemplifying his iconic rigorous language and bold aesthetic.
Exhibitions:
Peter Halley. Gary Tatintsian Gallery, 23 June-10 September 2017
Publications:
Peter Halley. Gary Tatintsian Gallery, 2017
