During the 1980s Peter Halley (1953, New York) developed a signature vocabulary that he has used in his work now for over forty years. Redeploying the language of geometric abstraction, he produced diagrammatic paintings representing social subjects.

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (1987) is composed of 4 separate components; 3 square monochrome canvases, supported by a long, thin panel painted with a red and black stripe. The work belongs to a series of four-panel paintings that Halleymade in the mid 1980’s that are titled after Italian and French films from the 1960’s. The title of this painting derives from a 1963 comedy Ieri, Oggi, Domani, directed by Vittorio De Sica (1901–1974). The composition employs a formal vocabulary that Halley developed in the early 1980’s and has employed since that time. Each of the three grey square panels represent ‘cells’ which are connected by a fluorescent-coloured ‘conduit’. Halleyrefers to the increasingly alienating effects of post-industrial society, where individuals often live in close proximity to each other but in the private space of their own apartment. Such ‘cells’ are connected by communication and electricity circuits and pipes that conduct the flow of air and water. Painted in the advent of the internet and in the first decade of the personal computer, Halleyreflects pervasive cultures of social, psychological and technological conditioning and can be read as an image of confinement.

Besides his paintings, Halley produced a series of prints on Kodalith photographic film, a (now obsolete) material used for graphic artwork. The dense black tones achieved using this photographic negative enabled Halley to produce a high-contrast print that renders the text as a clear mylar ‘window’, which is set in front of a white matt board, each piece measuring 64 × 75 cm. Halley’s Kodaliths reproduce words or phrases collected from a range of sources, including advertising, album sleeves, ATM screens and road signs. Collectively, they explore modes of receiving and processing energy and information, by isolating fragments of language. They can also be linked to Halley’s influential writing from the 1980s, which provided an important critical context for his paintings and the work of his peers.