Sunday 14 April 2013

Peter Halley - Waddington Custot

Peter Halley, Rectify, 2013
Peter Halley: Paintings 2012-2013 is at Waddington Custot Galleries until 3 May.
I fell in love with Peter Halley's Day-Glo, Roll-a-Texted, hard edge, 'Neo-Geo' paintings back in the late 80s. I even rather enjoyed the slightly ridiculous critical narratives that the iconography of 'cells' and 'conduits' attracted. From the gallery guide accompanying the NY Art Now exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in 1986:
Peter Halley believes that culture and the art system 'have become too circular to be subverted'. Appropriately, his abstract paintings are stark diagrams of prison cells and computer conduits. Graphically, Halley's main theme is the similarity among social, architectural, and 'informational' space, a similarity that he renders in circuitous Day-Glo patterns against a monochromatic background. The paintings, he says, 'are addressing the validity of truths about science and architecture, and maybe even the rational underpinnings of the social order as a whole'.
Well, those were the days of heroic Baudrillardian discourse. They don't write stuff like that any more. Actually, they do. Whatever, I am thrilled that Halley is still making such gorgeous paintings.
I gather that Waldemar Januszczak has written an enthusiastic review in the Sunday Times - but I haven't read it because it is hidden behind their paywall.

Peter Halley, Bang Goes the Theory, 2013
Peter Halley, Scandal, 2013

Peter Halley, Built, 2013
Peter Halley, Revenge, 2012/13?
Peter Halley, Camp, 2012/13?

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