Halley is also known for his critical writings, which, beginning in the 1980s, linked the ideas of French Post-Structuralist theorists including Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard to the digital revolution and the visual arts.

From 1996 to 2005, Halley published Index Magazine, which featured in-depth interviews with emergent and established figures in fashion, music, film, and other creative fields.

[10] The "conduits"—the lines connect various "cells" and other geometric patterns in a given work—represent the supports of "underlying informational and structural components of contemporary society," Amy Brandt writes.

"[11] In addition to urban structures such as modernist buildings and subways, Halley drew influence from the pop themes and social issues associated with new wave music.

He began to use fluorescent Day-Glo paint, which has an uncanny glow that recalls the artificial lights of postmodern society and the bright government-issued signs that mark streets and workers' clothing.

[14] The postmodern, commodity-like color and texture, not to mention the thickness, of Halley's canvases entered them into the art-historical conversation surrounding painting and objecthood.

"[15][16] In the 1980s, Halley's practice and career developed amid the artistic and intellectual discourse that arose in East Village artist-run galleries like International with Monument, Cash/Newhouse, and Nature Morte.

These spaces were a community for artists such as Halley, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Sherrie Levine, Ashley Bickerton, and Richard Prince, who "shared a focus on the role of technology in postmodern society and rejected nature as a touchstone of meaning."

(Bob Nickas, Dan Cameron, and the curatorial team Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo were curators and critics associated with this scene.

In 1983 he organized a show at the John Weber Gallery, Science Fiction, which included, among others, Jeff Koons as well as Ross Bleckner, Richard Prince, Taro Suzuki, Robert Smithson, and Donald Judd, the latter of whom had been an influence on Halley.

Because many of the works incorporated geometric shapes, Plexiglas and lights, some flashing or rotating, the total effect was crystalline like a Star Trek idea of Peter Halley, Jeff Koons, and the Art at Marketing ...

This high-tech sensibility has been common in popular science fiction as well as fashion, music, and other consumer products made to look geometricizing, streamlined, synthetic, or otherwise ultra-urban.

[19]Halley's first larger one-person exhibition came in 1985 at International with Monument, a gallery at the heart of the East Village scene run by Meyer Vaisman, Kent Klamen, and Elizabeth Koury, who had all met at the Parsons School of Design.

"[23] As he began his art career, Halley became interested in the French Post-Structuralist writers, including Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Paul Virilio, and Jean Baudrillard, many of whose works were translated into English in the late 1970s and early 1980s and were being discussed among New York intellectuals.

"[27] Halley put forth such ideas on modernism, postmodernism, culture, and the digital revolution—derived in part from Foucault, Baudrillard, and others, and with a neo-Marxist slant—in his numerous writings.

Halley highlighted the various roles of new wave music, Cold War cultural politics, and the increased digitization of experience brought about by computers and video games.

Additionally, he provided a critical overview of contemporary art during this period through examining a range of sources including the social theories of José Ortega y Gasset, Norbert Elias, and Richard Sennett.

[40] In 1993, Halley created Superdream Mutation, a digital print available for viewing and downloading on the web bulletin board-style platform The Thing.

[44] Throughout the twenty-first century, Halley has continued to employ his iconic "cells," "prisons" and "conduits" in his painting, as his primary subject remains the organization of social space.

But, Halley explained in 2011, "the nature of the social space we live in has changed immensely in the last thirty years since my project began.

[38][46] His installations mix imagery and media such as painting, fiberglass relief sculpture, wall-size flowcharts, and digitally generated wallpaper.

In 2002, Halley was commissioned by architects Abalos and Herreros for their recently completed public library in a working-class neighborhood populated by university students in the district of Usera, in Madrid.

Halley designed wall murals using the text from Jorge Luis Borges’ story, La Biblioteca de Babel.

[49][50] Three years later, in 2008, he completed a permanent installation of digital prints extending over five floors for the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.

In 2007 he collaborated with French designer Matali Crasset on an installation at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France; and with Italian architect Alessandro Mendini at Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italy, and at Mary Boone Gallery, New York.

The magazine often employed rising photographers like Juergen Teller, Terry Richardson, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Ryan McGinley, and ran interviews with artists of diverse media like Björk, Brian Eno, Marc Jacobs, Agnes b., Diamanda Galas, Harmony Korine, and Scarlett Johansson.

Three of Halley's former students, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Titus Kaphar, and Mary Reid Kelly, have received MacArthur Fellowships.