Ranch Hand Peter Halley debuts new Cell Grid paintings at The Ranch in Montauk to be exhibited this fall at Dallas Contemporary. BY CHRIS BYRNE
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eter Halley’s work has been shown extensively around the world. In 2022, the Musée d’Art Moderne GrandDuc Jean (Mudam), Luxembourg, will present a survey of his paintings from the 1980s. Recent solo exhibitions include the Lever House Art Collection, New York, 2018; the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, 2016; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2015; and the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Saint-Étienne, France, 2014. In tandem exhibitions—at The Ranch in Montauk this June and Dallas Contemporary in the fall—Halley will exhibit his Cell Grid Paintings, 2014-2021.
Chris Byrne (CB): Were there specific images that led to the Cell Grid paintings? How did the series develop? Peter Halley (PH): In my paintings, I’m continually trying to explore how a small, closed set of two-dimensional icons—“prisons” and “cells” are connected through “conduits”—changes as they are subjected to different formal strategies. If the entire painting is only a prison, how is it different from a painting with a prison and a background? If there are two cells, what happens if they are both on the same canvas or if they are on two different canvases joined together? What happens when the icons are repeated in a compositional grid?
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Top left and lower right: Majestic views of The Ranch. Photographs by Steven Stauffer. Peter Halley at The Ranch. Photograph by William Kahn.
