til Dec. 19

Renee Van Halm paints modernist, contemporary architecture and makes quite an impact by modifying how we look at it.     

We see not one, but multiple perspectives of buildings and their environments.  We see through the facades of a building not to the inside but to other sides of the building.  The layers are distinguished from one another by the use of different colour pallets.

It seems that we get to see the entirety of the building in a two-dimensional format in one cohesive image.  A sort of re-invention of what the Cubists did.   But I’m not technical that way, so take that with a grain of salt.  The result is something that could exist harmoniously as an abstract painting, but is entirely figurative.

Even though I understand that the paintings are all based on actual places, Van Halm often doesn’t give us any clues to what building she is basing her work on.  Many of these works go untitled.  But it also occurs to me that each painting could be representing more than one place or buildings that are imagined.

Clues to this are the ambiguity in things like time of day in the various layers of the painting.  For example, in the image above the light blue sky in the top corner suggests that it might be day time, but in the red building the yellow light suggest the bright but darker light of magic hour as it bounces off the front of a glass building, and in yet another it maybe night, the wall lit up by the harsh glow of car headlights.

The play of light, colours and dimensions are both clever and beautiful.  The suggestion of a story is also intriguing.  The combination of abstract, figurative and narrative styles of painting is surprisingly complex and gives us much to admire.