Artist’s statement
Cultural history and how we represent and inhabit architecture are fundamental to my work. Over the years I have looked at many subjects that reflect on art and design practices through the genres of still life and landscape as well as decor, abstraction and pattern. I am drawn to the expectations that underscore these preoccupations. Over forty years ago I began to work with the architecture found in early Renaissance paintings, from which I built life sized three-dimensional structures. This work led me to consider how architectural space governs contemporary experience. This preoccupation continues to find place in my work in painting, drawing and most recently ceramics. I cull images from the printed matter and the internet that I translate through manipulation and juxtaposition into new compositions that impose reconsidered meanings.
My ongoing interests are with the politics of space, who owns it, who inhabits it and how we as individuals, define and negotiate our private and public identities in the spaces where we live.
Biography
Renée Van Halm was born in the Netherlands and immigrated to Canada as a young child. She now lives and works in Vancouver after many years in Toronto, Montréal, and Berlin. Her undergraduate work was completed at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art and Design) and she completed an MFA at Concordia University in Montréal.
In addition to over 40 solo exhibitions, her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions such as: Form Follows Fiction, UTAC, Toronto (2016), The Poetics of Space, Vancouver Art Gallery (2015), New Monuments Forget the Future, Birch Contemporary (2015), Cut and Paste (2012) at the Equinox Gallery, Architypes in Sydney (2004) and Tokyo (2005); weak thought (1997-98) at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Songs of Experience (1983) at the National Gallery of Canada. Her work has been collected publicly and privately in Canada and elsewhere. She has recently had solo exhibitions at both the Equinox and Birch Contemporary galleries.
In addition, Van Halm has been involved with many related projects including the founding of Mercer Union, the artist run centre in Toronto, in 1979. She taught for over a decade at York University before joining the faculty of Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 1992 where she is now professor emerita. Her work is represented by Birch Contemporary in Toronto and the Equinox Gallery in Vancouver.