Santa Monica

Peter Halley offers more screaming retinal outrages in a new batch of paintings produced with Day-Glo acrylic and Roll-a-Tex, the stuff that looks like the ceilings in a tacky rental apartment. Each square piece features bars of color that hug the canvas edge or attach themselves at right angles to the central color square, like high-tech plumbing. In “Prison,” Halley has a bit of fun with vertical forest-green stripes on a pink square sitting in a patch of textured sea-foam green.

The titles of these paintings--”A Monstrous Paradox,” “Stimulus Shield”--mock the sober histories of color theory and minimalism. With the blaring crassness of hot oranges and sting greens, Halley brings the business of optical effects to a purposefully ridiculous high pitch. Even Op Art seems nerdily scientific next to this stuff, grounded in a sensibility frankly attuned to the visual affronts of life in the real world. The geometrical underpinnings of the works remain pretty cool and collected, nodding to Josef Albers with the civility of a young colleague who waits to giggle when the great man is out of sight. (Daniel Weinberg Gallery, 2032 Broadway, to Feb. 10.)