Peter Halley
1953 New York, EUA
Peter Halley uses geometry and colour to represent the networks, cells and structures organising contemporary social space.
Artwork in the collection
Exploding Cell, 1983
About the artwork
Exploding Cell (1983) is a pioneering work in “computer animation” that generates spaces from lines. These cells allude both to Foucault’s “grid” of the control society and to computer circuits.
Artistic career: Peter Halley
Career and projects
Lives and works in New York. Peter Halley is one of the most influential artists on the international scene. He came to prominence in the mid-1980s as the promoter of the so-called Neo-Geo movement. Although he uses geometry as a fundamental support of his works, he always insists on its figurative reference: the space and time of our society, its political and social terrain, the closed order in which we live. His cold, rectilinear forms are the visual expression of our complex urban landscape: rectangular cells connected by networks of conduits, prisons, diagrams, isolated organisms.
His characteristic Roll-a-tex texture and expressive use of colour also refer to our social environment, establishing affinities with Pop Art, digital information and mass culture.
Work in the collection: Exploding Cell, 1983