A Geometricised World In 1980 Peter Halley painted his first -prisons,- re-deploying the language of geometric abstraction in response to physical and bureaucratic environments. Radically deconstructing the language of abstraction, he re-imagined it not as a utopian source of liberation, but as a dystopian symbol of the regulation of physical and social space. As he wrote in 1990: -I wanted to draw attention to this geometricised, rationalised, quantified world. I saw it as a world characterised by efficiency, by regimentation of movement, bureaucracies, whether in the corporation, government, or university.- Working in the era of the mass adoption of personal computers and the advent of the Internet, he developed a tightly organized system of discrete, geometric forms that he refers to as -prisons,- -conduits,- and -cells.- Adopting non-traditional materials such as Roll- A-Tex, a paint additive that provides a readymade texture, and Day-Glo fluorescent colors, he referenced a pervasi
