Peter Halley was born in New York City in 1953. He received his BA from Yale University and his MFA from the University of New Orleans in 1978.
Moving to New York City had big influence on Halley’s painting style. Its three-dimensional urban grid led to geometric paintings that engage in a play of relationships between so-called "prisons" and "cells" – icons that reflect the increasing geometricization of social space in the world. Halley began to use colors and materials with specific connotations, such as fluorescent Day-Glo paint, mimcking the eerie glow artificial lighting and reflective clothing and signs, as well as Roll-a-Tex, a texture additive used as surfacing in suburban buildings.
Halley is part of the generation of Neo-Conceptualist artists that first exhibited in New York’s East Village, including Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Mayier Vaisman and Ashley Bickerton. These artists became identified on a wider scale with the labels Neo-Geo and Neo-Conceptualism, an art practice deriving from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Focussing on the commodification of art and its relation to gender, race, and class, neo-conceptualists question art and art institutions with irony and pastiche.
Halley's works were included in the Sao Paolo Biennale, the Whitney Biennale and the 54th Venice Biennale and represented in such museums and art institutions as the CAPC Musee d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Des Moines Art Center; The Tate Modern, London; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art; the Museum Folkwang, Essen and the Butler Institute of American Art.
Halley lives and works in New York City.
ONE PERSON AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS
2018
- New Works, Maruani Mercier, Brussels
- Lever House, New York (installation) AU-DESSOUS / AU DESSUS, Galerie Xippas, Paris (installation)
- Peter Halley. Patterns and Figures, Gouaches 1977/78, Galerie Thomas Modern, Munich
- Modern I Postmodern: Peter Halley and Robert Mangold, MARUANI MERCIER, Brussels, Belgium
2017
- Greene Naftali Gallery, New York
- Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Moscow
- Boats Crosses Trees Figures, Gouaches, 1977-78, Karma, New York, NY, USA
- Paintings from the 1980's, Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London (catalogue)
2016
- Peter Halley: New Paintings—Associations, Proximities, Conversions, Grids, curated by Richard Milazzo, Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Italy
- The Schirn Ring, Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt
- Metallic Paintings, MARUANI MERCIER, Knokke, Belgium (catalogue)
- Saw: A Suite of Four Paintings, Galerie Thomas Modern, Munich, Germany
- Peter Halley & Tracy Thomason, Teen Party, Brooklyn, NY
- Peter Halley: New Paintings - Associations, Proximities, Conversions, Grids, curated by Richard Milazzo, Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Italy
2015
- Geometry of the Absurd - Recent Paintings by Peter Halley, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California.
- Big Paintings From the 1980s to the present, curated by Benjamin Colman, Florence Griswold Museum, Connecticut
- Diagonal Histories, Art+Text Budapest, Budapest (with Imre Bak)
- Galerie Xippas, Geneva
- Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
- Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915 – 2015, Whitechapel Gallery, London
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
- Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
- Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
- Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- CAC Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Malága, Spain
- CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France
- Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
- Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy
- Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
- Des Moines Art Museum, Des Moines, Iowa
- Deste Foundation, Athens
- Eli Broad Foundation, Santa Monica
- Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris
- Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris
- Fundacion Caja de Pensiones, Madrid
- Sammlung Marx, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin
- Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
- Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan
- Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Krefeld, Germany
- Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
- Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg
- Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples, Italy
- Museo de Arte y Deseño Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica
- Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
- Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Amsterdam
- Proje4L Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul
- Sammlung Goetz, Munich
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
- Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Stedlijk Museum, Amsterdam
- South Dakota Art Museum, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD
- Tate Modern, London
- The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
- The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC
- The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY
- Tokyo International Forum Art Collection, Tokyo
- Vass László Collection, Gallery of Modern Art, Veszprém, Hungary
- Weisman Art Museum, The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
- Wright State University, Dayton, OH
