Peter Halley

Peter Halley creates fluorescent, diagramatic paintings suffused with social commentary. His circuit board-like canvases connect regimented arrangements of rectangles with precise, perpendicular lines. Alluding to what he calls the “geometrisation of modern life,” Halley observes parallels between the structures of electronic networks, prison cells and city planning. Dazzling neon palettes echo those used in eye-catching advertisements, and are rendered using industrial paints such as Roll-a-Tex and Day-Glo. Seamless surfaces, achieved using rollers rather than brushes, intentionally erase any trace of human touch.

As a prominent member of the 1980s Neo-Geo movement (also known as Neo-Geometric Conceptualism), Halley joined artists like Jeff Koons and Annette Lemieux in using abstraction to critique the individualism and materialism of Ronald Reagan’s America. When the movement emerged, Halley was particularly interested in modes of urban living that were at once insular and interlinked. City-dwellers were compartmentalised by the streets, floors and rooms of domestic space, and yet inextricably connected by technologies such as electrical grids and telephones. Undoubtedly, the same paradox endures four decades later in a post-internet world. As more and more of life moves online, Halley’s work speaks to the isolation of hyperconnectivity, as well as to enduring themes of social cohesion and power.