From May 1st until June 27th 2009, EL SOURDOG HEX e.V. will be showing Cells and Conduits by Peter Halley (b. 1953 New York, USA), a collection of the artist´s paintings from 1987 to 2002.

In the 1970s, Peter Halley studied painting and art history at Yale University in New Haven. In 1978, he received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Orleans. He then went on to lecture at the University of Southwest Louisiana in Lafayette and traveled extensively throughout Mexico, Central America, Europe and North Africa.

In the early 80s, Peter Halley returned to New York City and began to take a closer look at New Wave music and issues related to social equality in the United States. Geometric forms and variations thereof are used, time and again, in his pieces and take the guise of things like prison bars, cells and walls. Halley developed his own pictorial vocabulary in which the square, or "the cell," has a specific meaning: one that is both formalistic, as well as a symbol of prevailing social conditions. The use of geometry also reflects American urban planning and the way streets there are generally laid on a grid.

While Halley was still in his twenties, his work was shown in a solo exhibition at PS122 in New York City´s East Village. Since then Peter Halley´s art has been featured in numerous exhibitions and collections in both the US and Europe. Halley resides in New York.

"I never really got what linear abstraction was all about. Only now that the geometric art movement has passed can it be used to explain the meaning of geometry. Linearity has developed into a language."  (Peter Halley)
(source: Peter Halley, Nowhere/Elsewhere, Städtische Galerie Erlangen, 1992)

"His basic approach to art is that geometry is a metaphor for society. The primary elements of his iconography are right-angled cells intersecting by means of lines and linear structures. These are symbols of an array of systems and networks in modern urban life. His images symbolize the current social landscape – one of isolation and dependency."
(source: staedtische-galerie-erlangen.de)

"Halley´s re-evaluation of Abstraction is associated, in particular, with observations of the form of the town, which he described as a 'geometric machine.' In Halley´s eyes, the severe order consequently perceived as dominant is associated with the loss of the sovereign human being who finds itself locked in rooms which control it."
(source: artnews.org)

Original sources:
Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Peter Halley: Collected Essays 1981-1987, Zurich.
Matake, Makiko, "Painting as Sociogram," in Peter Halley, Maintain Speed,
publ. Cory Reynolds, New York 2000, 50.
Rosenblum, Robert, "Best of 2000: Peter Halley," in ARTFORUM, December 2002, 114.
Varnedoe, Kirk and Adam Gopnik. High & Low, Munich, 1990.