Peter Halley "Early Work: 1982 to 1987”

Mary Boone Gallery (Midtown)

poster for Peter Halley "Early Work: 1982 to 1987”

This event has ended.

Assembled from paintings in American private collections, this exhibition chronicles Peter Halley’s work from 1982 to 1987, the years when, after setling in New York, the artist was developing a body of work that significantly challenged the era’s prevailing ideas about the nature of abstract painting. Inspired by a broad range of interests— his involvement with the nuances of urban spatial experience, the new digital technology, the materialism of Minimalism, the iconic quality of Warhol’s paintings, New Wave music, and French Post-Structuralist theory, Halley redeployed the language of 20th century geometric abstraction to develop a symbolic landscape populated by his Prisons, Cells, and the Conduits that connected them. First exhibited in the mid-1980s, these controversial paintings were perceived as a challenge to both the flamboyant self-expression of the then-dominant Neo-Expressionist movement and to the self-referential hermeticism of Minimalist geometric abstraction. Reflective of the dark political and social realities of the Reagan era, Halley’s early works are spare and rigorous, uningratiating in their reticence and repetition. Many are characterized by an eerie luminosity brought about by the juxtaposition of black with a single Day-Glo color.

[Image: Peter Halley "Two Cells with Conduit and Under-Ground Chamber" (1983) acrylic, roll-a-tex/canvas 70 x 80 in.]

Media

Schedule

from September 10, 2009 to October 24, 2009

Opening Reception on 2009-09-10 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Peter Halley

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