Geometry of the Absurd

Geometry of the Absurd: Recent Paintings by Peter Halley features eight large paintings produced between 2007 and 2015. The paintings selected for the exhibition share in common a distinctive double-stack composition—with two prisons or cells, one precariously suspended above another. This work presents, as Colin Gardner suggests in his catalogue essay for the exhibition, “a twist on the artist’s earlier horizontal, side by side cell and conduit paintings (with their necessary sense of enclosure).” The dynamic of each painting is found in the endlessly jockeying for position of two prominent shapes, as if each is attempting to be “on top.” Together, these works project a worldview in which technology and social connections have run amuck, expressed through a geometry that has lost its claim to rationality and become senseless and absurd.

Event website