Viewing Room | Peter Halley. 40 Watts, 2017

"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.

Peter Halley. 40 Watts, 2017 (detail) © Gary Tatintsian Gallery and the artist

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.

His works juxtapose meticulously crafted geometries with a glowing, artificial appearance, creating a complex visual experience based on contrasts and the form perfection. 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.

Peter Halley. 40 Watts, 2017 © Gary Tatintsian Gallery and the artist

"The space of work became premised on the idea that the way we live is characterized by physical isolation, but that we are reconnected through technology. Technology and economics create these channels of communication in ways that we do not choose." – Peter Halley

The artist's blend of a deep understanding of the origins of abstract painting, along with a sense of the incredible pace of modern technology and urbanism, has earned him the reputation as one of the most influential contemporary art theorists. His museum exhibitions and public projects have become bridges between architectural ensembles and spaces of the past and present.