painting

For over 30 years, Peter Halley’s paintings, with their characteristic Day-Glo color and distinctive faux-stucco surfaces, have engaged in variations on the same closed set of geometric forms, designated by the artist as prisons, cells, and conduits — “icons that reflect the increasing geometricization of social space in the world in which we live.”

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Using distinctive materials including Day-Glo acrylics and Roll-a-Tex, Peter Halley’s paintings present variations of geometric forms that he and others have designated as prisons, cells, and conduits. With their visual associations with modern and contemporary architecture and design, electronic and digital models, and social systems, Halley’s paintings have long predicted—and continue to serve as metaphors for—a vast range of cultural phenomena. In particular, his intense and often dazzling combination of colors and connecting shapes may be perceived as allegories for many of the physical and conceptual elements of the Information Age.