PETER HALLEY  (BORN 1953)

A painter of post-modern geometric expression dubbed by critics as "Neo-Geo," Peter Halley is also a printmaker and Director of Painting and Printmaking at the graduate school of art at Yale University.  His primary studio is in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, and from there he creates large rectilinear compositions that use Day-Glo and acrylic paints and areas of stucco texture to create subtle or brilliant effects.  Many of his works are large-scale wall pieces. 

Peter Halley was born in New York, where he was raised on the 16th floor of a mid-town Manhattan building.  He studied at Yale University, where he gained his BA in 1975, and received his MFA in 1978 at the University of New Orleans, and remained in that city for two.  His first solo exhibition was at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans in 1978. 

He returned to New York to live in 1980.  From 1984 to 1987, he was a member of the gallery, International with Monument, which he founded with Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons and Meyer Vaisman. 

Halley's work was included in the 1987 Whitney Biennial.  Museum surveys include Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany (1989),;capc Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux (1991); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997);  and Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Japan (1998). 

Installations have been exhibited at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris (1995), the University of Buffalo, New York (1997) and Museum Folkwang, Essen (1998).  His published critical writings include two collections of essays from the 1980s and 1990s.