Peter Halley - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 13, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Galerie Javier Lopez, Madrid

  • Catalogue Essay


    Blue Prison is a matrix of horizontal bars (what Halley aptly calls cells) and vertical columns, illustrative of its name. The painting has an intense glare –electric yellow set against opaque hues of deep blue and maroon on top of a thick stripe of black. It is hard on the eyes and repelling just like a prison, without guards, metal beams, and barbwire fence. The piece resembles a computer chip as a critique of our technology saturated world and overemphasis on bureaucratizing every last vestige of human interaction. Halley is known for his Neo-Geo and neo-conceptualist approach to his work and offers a social commentary here with a claustrophobic cluster of shapes mimicking the physical oppression of suburbia and urban city life. It is metaphoric, slightly tongue-in-cheek as much as it provides a serious look at our physical and mental limitations within modern society.

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN COLLECTION

131

Blue Prison

2004

Oil on canvas.

53 3/4 x 48 in. (136.5 x 121.9 cm).


Signed and dated "Peter Halley 2004" on the reverse.

Estimate
$50,000 - 70,000 

Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010
New York