Peter Halley: Cell Grids

A delightful board book of Halley's painted "cells" finding surprising order in the form of rectilinear grids

In his series of colorful geometric paintings shown at Dallas Contemporary, Peter Halley (born 1953) rearranges his rigorous visual language of "conduits" and "cells" into structured square grids reminiscent of 20th-century modernist artists such as Agnes Martin and Piet Mondrian. This playful board book, according to curator Peter Doroshenko, "aims to elucidate the true essence of Halley's Cell Grid paintings ... the complex interplay between the visual and the conceptual in his work." Art critic and historian Barry Schwabsky writes that these works mark a new phase--which time will reveal as either a momentous shift or ultimately a continuation--in Halley's career as a protagonist of contemporary abstract and geometric painting. But as Halley himself says of his Cell Grids series, "I've always had a sense of humor about my work. It amuses me to think that someone looking at one of these paintings might think, 'Peter Halley has finally given up and become an abstract painter.'"