Viewing Room | Peter Halley. Two Cells With Circulating Conduit, 1986

The geometric pattern of 'Two Cells With Circulating Conduit' draws parallels with the legendary Hard-edge paintings of Donald Judd, Frank Stella, and Josef Albers. While these works are often characterized as "abstract," Peter Halley prefers the term "diagrammatic" for his exacting, minimalist compositions. He perceives his lexicon of squares, bars, and rectangles as encoded representations of the ubiquitous presence of geometry in social interactions.

In Halley's critical analysis, life within modern culture has been inscribed and circumscribed by geometric networks: envision the city grid, the office skyscraper, the high-rise residential complex, the prison facility, the parking lot. Artist's morphological explorations also focus on the traditional manner in which geometric abstraction has been interpreted. By incorporating the formal elements of Minimalist art, such as rigid color planes, singular shapes, and nonhierarchical arrangements, and mapping a narrative sensibility onto them, Halley challenges the presumed neutrality of such artistic expressions.

The division of work into two discrete segments evokes an architectural cross-section; the squares symbolise prototypical urban dwellings while the lines indicates the hidden, technological underworld of pipes and cables connecting them. Initiated in 1981, the cell-and-conduit paintings showcase what Halley has described as the "seductive" geometry of 1980s society. The vibrant Day-Glo colors and textured Roll-a-Tex ersatz stucco paint transform these canvases into symbols of a social landscape where artifice replaces empirical experience.