Edition of 40 + 8 APs

For over twenty-five years, Peter Halley’s geometric paintings have been engaged in a play of rela­tionships between what he calls "prisons" and "cells" that reflect the increasing geometricization of social space. Inspired by New York City’s gridded urban plan and by his own isolation within it, he imagines the abstract shape as a barred prison cell connected to the outside world through electronic communication.  

During the 1980s, Peter Halley developed a distinctive visual language that he has continued to employ in his artistic practice for over four decades. By reappropriating the elements of geometric abstraction, he constructed a pictorial system consisting of "prisons," "cells," and "conduits," allowing him to create diagrammatic paintings that represented social themes. Through these works, he explored the consequences and enduring effects of urbanization and industrialization in a post-industrial society profoundly shaped by technological advancements. Working at the emergence of the internet and during a time when personal computers and video games became widely adopted, he depicted the physical and bureaucratic environments of the late twentieth century, capturing the systemic logic that manifested within the architectures of the nascent digital realm.