Early Works: Peter Halley
In honor of Peter Halley's forthcoming monographic exhibition at the MUDAM entitled Conduits. Paintings from the 1980s opening on March 31, 2023, we are pleased to present works by the artist that highlight this important formative period.
Early Works presents the basis of post-conceptual ideas formed in the 1980s and early 90s that Halley continues to develop to this day. This formative era marked the development of his stylistic language that made him––alongside contemporaries including Ross Bleckner, Jeff Koons, and Haim Steinbach––a standout pioneer of the post-conceptualist, neo-geo movement.
Efficiency and dialectic endurance being key to his production, his paintings are labor and thought-intensive energy systems made with a consciously limited number of formal tools and pictorial elements amounting to a positive and fruitful reaction to the alleged “death of painting”. A peculiar intertwinement of painted physicality and worldly connectivity, the works distinctly address persistent elements of both the medium and the now.
Peter Halley was born in New York in 1953. He studied first at Yale University and then at the University of New Orleans where he received his MFA. Also a respected art critic and theorist, Halley is revered for his essays and his self-published magazine INDEX featuring interviews and profiles of other artists. His paintings can be found in collections worldwide including MoMA, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Tate Modern, London, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, among many others.
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Peter HalleyRed Cell with Orange Background, 1985one panel
fluorescent acrylic and Roll-a-Tex on canvas163 x 183 cm
64 x 72 in -
Peter HalleyYellow Cell with Triple Conduit, 1986two attached panels
acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas196 x 196 x 10 cm
77 1/8 x 77 1/8 x 4 in -
Peter HalleyPrevention Mechanism, 1989one panel
acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas196 x 329 x 4 cm
77 1/8 x 129 1/2 x 1 5/8 in -
Peter HalleyWorld of Mire, 1991two attached panels
acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas214 x 207 cm
84 1/4 x 81 1/2 in -
Peter HalleyTodd, 1991two attached panels
acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas229 x 217 cm
90 1/8 x 85 3/8 in -
Peter HalleyException, 1997acrylic, metallic acrylic, pearlescent acrylic and Roll-A-Tex on canvas188 x 178 x 10 cm
74 x 70 1/8 x 4 in -
Peter HalleyNowhere, 1992Acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas87 x 157 1/8 x 4 in
221 x 399 x 10 cm -
Peter HalleyPrison, 1985one panel
fluorescent acrylic and Roll-a-Tex on canvas163 x 163 cm
64 1/8 x 64 1/8 in -
Peter HalleyBlack Cell with Underground Sequence, 1986three attached panels
acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, Flashe, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas175 x 284 cm
69 x 112 in -
Peter HalleyBlack Cell, 1989two attached panels
acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, Flashe, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas228 x 267 cm
90 x 105 in