On the occasion of Peter Halley’s first solo exhibition at Berggruen Gallery, the artist sat down with Berggruen Gallery’s Editorial Associate Mary Kate Tankard to discuss his visual vocabulary, the effects of digital technology, and his views on creativity and game theory.
Mary Kate Tankard: The other day, a man walked into the gallery wearing sunglasses, scanned the room, and let out a laugh to himself. I asked, “Are you familiar with Peter Halley’s work?” Without any context, he said, “I can’t tell if it’s a social sculpture or a Samuel Beckett play.” Then, he turned and walked out.
Peter Halley: [Laughs] That’s fantastic.
MT: You’ve talked about creativity through the lens of game theory. Could you elaborate on that?
PH: Yes, I’m fascinated by games—especially the idea of someone endlessly playing with just a few variables. Is this act at the heart of creativity, or is it just a bizarre way to pass the time? Growing up, I saw art as a limited set of actions. Tennis, for example, has rules. When you serve, it has to land in the service box. But if you can figure out a creative way to make it land where your opponent can’t return it, that’s a success—but it’s still within the rules of the game.
Artists like Cézanne and Rothko, who spent years exploring the same subject, showed me how variation within limited variables creates something meaningful. That, to me, is what creativity is all about—taking an impulse and seeing where it goes.
I also admire artists who approach their work as a thought experiment. The work of the ‘60s and ‘70s, like Dan Flavin using fluorescent light bulbs to make sculpture or Roman Opałka painting numbers endlessly, was radically absurd—yet they followed through for the full course of their lives.
I’ve pursued the same strategy. By limiting myself to a few elements, I’ve created a kind of game board where I can explore how variations within such constraints create new possibilities.
MT: Let’s talk about your iconography—the prisons, cells, and conduits. How did these icons come about?
PH: When I returned to New York in the ‘80s, the isolation of urban life really struck me. In 1981, I decided to take the square -- the ultimate modernist, rational shape, going all the way back to Malevich -- and treat it as a symbol for confinement. I added bars to the square, it became a prison. Shortly thereafter, I removed the bars and began to call the simple squares “cells.” Then I added a stucco material, Roll-A-Tex, to give these prisons and cells a solid, architectural presence. You could imagine the prisons and cells having an interior space that someone could be contained in.
I felt our lives had become more and more mediated by technology—telephone lines, electricity, television, and then the internet. I added conduits that connected the prisons and cells. I felt my work represented a paradox— even though we’re more physically isolated than ever, we are more connected by technology.
MT: You’ve always rooted your work in your urban surroundings. Did post-structuralist theory, like the writings of Foucault, influence your approach?
PH: Yes, but the paintings came first. I then encountered Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault in the early ‘80s. After I read that, it did a lot to encourage my exploration of how our movements are limited and controlled by social forces.
MT: How do Foucault and Baudrillard’s ideas continue to influence your paintings?
PH: Foucault’s ideas about how our movements and communications are shaped by society apply directly to how we engage with social media. Baudrillard’s theories about the increasing mediation of our reality—especially the blurring between reality and its representation—are more relevant than ever. In the ‘80s, we were already aware of our disconnection from nature, but now, it’s undeniable. We live in a world where technology and social media shape our experience, leaving nature to feel increasingly distant.
MT: Do you see this show as a culmination of your work, a kind of tipping point?
PH: Absolutely. This show at Berggruen represents a shift toward compositions that stack up the prisons and cells, almost like children’s blocks. Since the time that Trump was first elected, a lot of instability has come into my work. In every painting, there's only one element touching the ground, and the other prisons or cells are stacked on top of it.
Some of the paintings almost read like the more outrageous shaped buildings that architects are doing these days, where the elements are cantilevered out or configured in dramatic ways. All of these paintings are also composed around a grid, but a grid that has been shifted or interrupted.
MT: Was this change subconscious? Or were you intentionally visualizing instability?
PH: It was both. The conduits disappeared from my work a few years ago. The transition reflected how our world has shifted to wireless, digital technologies. It amazed me when they developed a gadget where you could put your phone down on a little pad and it would charge – this idea of wireless charging or wireless internet.
MT: Have you heard of the “Palm to Pay” technology? It scans your palm for transactions.
PH: Wow, I hadn’t heard of that. Someone just told me about a grocery store where you can grab your items and walk out without checking out at all.
MT: Yes, it’s already happening. The store tracks your movements as you shop.
PH: Being an artist, I'm particularly interested in the relationship between computers and space. Computers do a very good job of mapping two-dimensional space, and I love the concept of GPS. Did you know -- when you're flying in a commercial airliner, its computer is basically flying the plane and the pilot essentially only a backup? That's been going on for decades. That aspect of the power of digital technology has always been fascinating to me.
The other thing I'm fascinated by is data centers, I would love to visit one. Imagine this huge building as big as four Walmarts — full of circuitry. The amount of storage capacity is just awesome.
MT: But there's also a loss in all of this. This generation is leaving behind fewer meaningful physical records, fewer tangible archives.
PH: I'm of a generation where you would buy a record and then you owned and lived with this thing. Let’s say it's Bob Dylan… owning a Bob Dylan record was a decision, an investment, and having this physical object was meaningful. Younger generations probably have a different relationship to books and music.
MT: This speaks to the idea of minimalism—of having a limited vocabulary but understanding it deeply. It’s different from the way we are inundated with information now. We have all the information in the world, yet we’re less informed than ever.
PH: [Laughs] Yes, that’s true. People often make a distinction between information and knowledge in the digital world. Knowledge is in crisis, for sure.
MT: In the early days of the internet, there was this utopian belief that it would open up new worlds. You mentioned that your color choices became less austere during this time.
PH: In the early ‘90s, I began to draw on the computer using Adobe Illustrator, which had an enormous effect on my work, because you can so easily move things around and change their shape. The drawing you're working on, you can stretch it, plug things in, and take things out in different ways. My compositional strategies are totally based on that.
MT: As technology developed, did it bring both excitement and skepticism to your work?
PH: Definitely. I’ve always been interested in how my work addresses the technological world rather than the natural one. Fluorescent Day-Glo paint, for example, has no equivalent in nature. It’s factory-made pigment that glows in a way nothing in the natural world can replicate.
During the ‘70s, I lived in New Orleans and was exposed to the sunbelt’s rapid development. The use of cheap, faux stucco—like Roll-A-Tex—became a signifier for me. It’s a parody of the “authentic” painterly textures you’d expect in high art.
MT: Was it accepted when you started using Roll-A-Tex?
PH: [Laughs] Well, an interior designer once walked into my studio and said, in a very funny way: “I spend all my time trying to get my clients to get rid of this stuff.” She didn't like my work very much. But I think she appreciated it within the context of artists like Haim Steinbach and Jeff Koons, and perhaps even Jenny Holzer, who at the time were incorporating commercially available materials from the industrial world into their work.
MT: Is it true that you work on multiple paintings at once, rather than finishing one before moving on to the next?
PH: That’s right. I plan out the entire show in advance—choosing all the compositions before I even start painting. This is partly practical; I need to order the stretchers for each painting, and that takes time. While waiting, I work on color studies. The paintings evolve through multiple stages, so at any given time, several works are in progress simultaneously.
MT: As an artist and teacher, what are you hopeful about?
PH: Art has always transcended language and communication barriers. It’s about people making physical things in a world dominated by virtual experiences. The art world is one of the last places where people connect face-to-face. People have to show up. They have to go to a gallery, or even an art fair. Despite the commercialization of the art world and the consolidation of power in a few mega-galleries, I think art still has an important cultural role to play. And it’s still a space in which there is competition between diverse ideologies.
