In Conversation: Chris Martin with Peter Halley

Join Timothy Taylor for a conversation between artists Chris Martin and Peter Halley inside Martin's second solo show with the gallery and first at Timothy Taylor in New York, titled Speed of Light. This presentation highlights themes that have characterised the artist’s painting practice for five decades: process; directness; and openness to experience.

5:30pm: doors open, 6pm: talk begins

Left to right: Chris Martin and Peter Halley

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Chris Martin (b. 1954, Washington D.C.) is an American artist who lives and works between Brooklyn and upstate New York. Martin is known for his vibrant, colourful paintings, which alternate between graphic figuration and ambient painterly abstraction. His paintings have been critically acclaimed for their immediacy and aesthetic diversity, fusing autobiographical elements with a wide-ranging visual lexicon equally grounded in playful pop-cultural referents and twentieth-century art history. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions in institutions worldwide, including Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2015); Rectangle, Brussels (2015); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany (2011); and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2011). Recent group exhibitions include The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2024); Drunk vs. Stoned 3, The Ranch, Montauk, New York (2023); Black Light, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Spain (2018); Animal Farm, Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2017); and Thinking Out Loud: Notes on an Evolving Collection, The Warehouse, Dallas (2017). His work is included in the permanent collections of institutions including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Portland Museum of Art, Portland; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among other museums. Paintings, a career-spanning monograph, was published by Skira in 2017.

Peter Halley (b. 1953 in New York, NY) received his BA from Yale University and his MFA from the University of New Orleans in 1978. His three-dimensional urban grid led to geometric paintings that engage in a play of relationships between so-called "prisons" and "cells" – icons that reflect the increasing geometricization of social space in the world. His works were included in the Sao Paolo Biennale, the Whitney Biennale and the 54th Venice Biennale and represented in such museums and art institutions as the CAPC Musee d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, The Tate Modern, London, the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Japan, the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Butler Institute of American Art, Ohio.

Host or Publisher Timothy Taylor