"Hier"

19/01 – 02/03/2008

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Hidden openness

Household objects, references to nature, framed spaces: Frank Halmans has dealt with it for years. In the studio stands a low, simple MDF cabinet in which all sorts of nature books are displayed. There are so many, that you might think this cabinet belongs to a biologist. At least, that’s what you think, until you notice that the ‘bookends’ consist of aerosols with pesticides and other poisons. Further on is a scale model, built from a collection of odd stacked ‘dollhouse doors’, along which a climber works his way to the top. Halmans often uses elements from nature. For the Van Limburg Stirumplein in Amsterdam, Halmans designed a round gatehouse, where the tram rides along with a bow.

With its austere, elegant, open form and finished ceramic tiles, it reminds one of the architecture from the fifties. In the windowsills are bronze replicas of houseplants. The gatehouse at the Van Limburg Stirumplein dates from 1997. In subsequent years, Halmans continued to work independent as well as by assignment. He doesn’t make use of a strict separation between them: ‘All the work that I make, I consider as an assignment, whether it is for a public space or for a gallery. At a gallery, where art can be seen in a protected environment and with prior knowledge, the polemic between the viewer and the art work can be conducted in a more layered and more subtle way than in a public space. I find the blunt side of that space very attractive. I try to achieve a symbiosis between the different levels, with the ‘popular’ and the ‘museum’ at both extremes.’

Fragments from a text by Ingrid Commandeur, 2006

words

Between waking and sleeping, between looking and averting the gaze, one finds a place of shades, of semi-somnolent stares, dreams, and musings.

It is a frontier where firm and fast definitions lose their certainty, or their value as signposts. The attention shifts itself from the concrete outer world to an inner one: ones thoughts descend into solipsistic concentration. These places of transition play an important role in my work. I'm interested in transitional spaces and objects, like window sills and waiting rooms. But also in rituals of ingress and egress like the wiping of feet upon entering, and the inspection of appearance and combing of hair before leaving.

I want with my work to create places which have the effect of intensifying these rituals.

Frank Halmans