Peter HALLEY

Peter HALLEY (1953)

American artist born on September 24, 1953 in New York. Peter Halley is a painter and printmaker linked to the minimalist, neo-conceptual and neo-geo movements. He is both an artist and an art theorist, author of essays, and is interested in the historical and contextual variations of the meanings that geometry can take.

Peter Halley began his studies at Philips Academy in Massachusetts. He graduated in 1971 and then enrolled at Yale University in Art History. Considered one of the leading figures of his generation, he is famous for his geometric and colourful works, which he calls Prisons or Cells in reference to our urban environment and the social organisation of the world in which we live.

In the early 1980s, the American painter Peter Halley became the spokesperson for a new abstraction on the New York art scene, called Neo-Geo.
As part of the "Neo Geo" movement, the American Peter Halley developed a geometric language. His work on a series of motifs evoking the prison and the cell evokes the organisation of contemporary social space, subjected to an increasing geometrisation that is particularly sclerosing for lives and thought. His main theme remains isolation, whether it is the isolation of individuals in prison or the fate of the limited individual in a capitalist society.

His visually striking minimalist works of "prisons" or "cells" are characterised by the use of fluorescent industrial paints and synthetic plaster (Day-Glo" or "Roll-a-Tex", thickening medium or fluorescent synthetic colour).
Halley's works symbolise the social organisation within our post-industrial society and underline the influence of mathematical and computer models as well as communication flows on all aspects of our lives.
 
His first solo exhibition took place in 1978. From 1984 to 1987 he founded and ran the International With Monument gallery with Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons and Meyer Vaisman.

Peter Halley has had numerous solo exhibitions in institutions, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (1992), the Dallas Museum of Art (1995), the MoMA in New York (1997), the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain Saint-Étienne Métropole (2014),... His works are held in the most important collections such as the Dallas Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Lausanne.

Today, Halley lives in New York. As chairman of the art department at Yale University, he is committed to the education of the next generation of artists.