Peter Halley (born 1953) is well known for his brightly colored, gridded, geometric abstractions which he calls “prisons” and “cells.” Composed of rectangular shapes and vertical bars, Halley’’s works evoke a range of geometric network models, from the urban grid to high-rise apartment buildings to electromagnetic conduits. In an introduction to this publication, which reproduces works created since 2000, Jo Melvin writes: “In Peter Halley’’s paintings colors clash and conjoin to create a dizzying sensation. At times the optical effect created by the Day-Glo’’s luminosity is so jarring that the paintings almost hurt the eye. He celebrates effects such as the plethora of color in neon signs, internet surfing, and our image-saturated media world. The three-dimensional quality of Halley’’s work asserts the object status of the paintings in a way that photographic reproduction simply cannot represent.”
