Peter Halley
Same Time, 2003
Halley’s work is characterized by chromatic intensity and uses of the language of geometric abstraction, in his case always with a figurative referent. He recontextualizes the geometric abstraction of the avant-garde and preceding movements in an urban environment, providing a social and aesthetic critique of Modernism’s idealism. His paintings reflect the organizational infrastructure of contemporary social space and the intense flux of people, commerce, and data in the post-industrial urban landscape of the digital age; metaphors for the places where we live and work, as computer chips and communication channels. His large-scale canvases with pure colours combine the recurrent use of cell and circuit patterns with flat and relief elements, employing a reduced formal vocabulary that plays with variations of scale and combination or repetition.
The exhibition draws on the museum’s own extensive collection of works by the artist—including masterpieces from across his long career—supplemented by key works from other public and private collections, and provides an extended glimpse into the prolific production of this 91-year-old painter. Featuring about ninety works—including some of the artist’s most important paintings—the exhibition will offer visitors a retrospective overview of this seminal artist’s oeuvre from the 1950s to today.
