Peter Halley
b. 1953, New York, United States

Peter Halley is an American artist who came to prominence as a central figure of the Neo-Conceptualist movement of the 1980s. His paintings redeploy the language of geometric abstraction to explore the organization of social space in the digital era.

Since the 1980s, Halley’s lexicon has included three elements: “prisons” and “cells,” connected by “conduits,” which are used in his paintings to explore the technologically determined space and pathways that regulate daily life. Using fluorescent color and Roll-a-Tex, a commercial paint additive that provides readymade texture, Halley embraces materials that are anti-naturalistic and commercially manufactured.

In the mid 1990s Halley pioneered the use of wall-sized digital prints in his site-specific installations. He has executed installations at Museo Nivola, Orani, Sardinia (2021); Greene Naftali, New York (2019); Venice Biennale (2019); Lever House, New York (2018); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2016); Disjecta, Portland (2012); the Gallatin School, New York University, (2008, 2017); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997); and the Dallas Museum of Art (1995). In 2005, Halley was also commissioned to create a monumental painting for Terminal D at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Texas.

Halley served as professor and director of the MFA painting program at the Yale School of Art from 2002 to 2011. From 1996 to 2005, Halley published INDEX Magazine, which featured interviews with figures working in a variety of creative fields. Halley is also known for his essays on art and culture, written in the 1980s and 1990s, in which he explores themes from French critical theory and the impact of burgeoning digital technology. His Selected Essays, 1981 – 2001, was published by Edgewise Press, New York, in 2013. Halley’s writings have been translated into Spanish, French, and Italian.

A catalogue raisonné, PETER HALLEY: Paintings of the 1980s, was published in 2018 by JRP Ringier.

Halley’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Sammlung Marx, Berlin, Germany; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; and the Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea, among others.