About this Item
"Peter Halley s artistic research moves in the area of geometric abstraction and as he himself explains … these are paintings of prisons, cells, and walls… Here, the idealist square becomes the prison. Geometry is evealed as confinement… The cell is a reminder of the apartment house, the hospital bed, the school desk the isolated endpoints of industrial structure… The paintings are a critique of idealist Modernism. In the 'color field is placed a jail… The conduits connect the units. Vital fluids flow in and out. Square and rectangular forms, defined by the artist as cells or prisons , are placed in relationship to one another through conduits in square sections representing the increasing geometrization of the social sphere of contemporary electronic technological society and invite us to reflect upon the effects of psychological pressure on the life of the human being. The minimalist geometry recalls the cards of electronic circuits and the colors, intense and brilliant obtained thanks to the use of Day-Glo paint allude to the surges of luminous currents produced by technological society. As Richard Milazzo writes: Think of the cut and dry manner of Halley s paintings over the years, nearly Wittgensteinian in their purity and severity, even when the colors, the conduits and the cells, perform seemingly in a multitude of dimensions, jumping absurdly through square hoops, becoming, no matter how rectiinear, contorted within a Dionysian dance, a metaphysical paroxysm, losing all Apollonian control… The vital fluids that course through the conduits and which flow into the cells are the lives of individuals who circulate in social-technological systems, where actions are confined within the fixed limits already established by the system, where apparent liberty is guaranteed, but only within fixed boundaries. Similar to these, the fluids in hydraulic systems that circulate through conduits along predetermined routes, closed from their surfaces, create a more physical pressure, equivalent to the psychological pressure endured by individuals confined within the technological system that governs and controls the actions carried out by human beings inside the system. Halley s circuits do not appear to leave space for alternative routes; the conduits that flow into the cells, forming a closed circuit, indicate perhaps that there is no way to escape a constantly growing technology. Or maybe this obsessive manifestation of geometric abstraction, which precludes the form of the circle symbol of life and vital energy invites us to reflect upon the necessity of returning to the symbiotic equilibrium of nature and man. Halley inserts himself culturally into the process of evolution of abstract language that began with Cézanne, by way of Malevich, Mondrian, Albers and American minimalism and first among everyone, Stella to enter into dialogue with different languages, such as abstract expressionism." Text: Milazzo Richard in English and Italian, cm 25x34; pp. 220; COL and BW; hardcover. Edition of 500. [314/500] New.
Seller Inventory # 27506
Contact seller
Report this item
