Peter Halley is well-known for his large, colorful, geometric paintings of diagrams, conduits and prison cells. His upcoming exhibition at 303 Gallery marks the first time a show has been exclusively devoted to a lesser-known body of Halley's work: his Kodaliths.
In these works, which are made of opaque graphics film, words function as cut-outs or "windows" against a black background. Halley uses texts that are found "out in the world," the vocabulary of computers, records, advertising and traveling, but although the words chosen have specific meanings in the physical world, they are not without double entendres or existential references. The Kodaliths could also serve as subtitles to his paintings, for like his paintings, they explore modes of receiving and processing energy and information. In describing the world, they capture the same condition described in Halley's paintings.