Renée Van Halm
IRL

Renée Van Halm
IRL

Over a long and dedicated career, Renée Van Halm has pursued her interest in expressions of creativity by others, especially those working in the fields of craft and design. Her own practice draws on a wide range of references, from era-specific domestic paint colours, to woven patterns produced by female members of the Bauhaus design group, and in this current body of work, patterned lengths of cloth from the late 1880s made as essential fashion accessories for women to express their individuality, commonly known as French ribbons.
The title of the exhibition, IRL, is an abbreviation for “in real life,” a term developed in the early days of the internet as a way to distinguish events and interactions occurring offline, outside the internet and its projected subjectivities and fantasies. The title acknowledges Van Halm’s interest in the very real, tangible impacts of pattern, colour, and design on social and cultural life. In viewing her works in person, physical characteristics of the thin brushstrokes and the materiality of the canvas are observed and felt, and one’s focus is activated by lively compositions, in real life.
For a list of available works, please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com

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Renée Van Halm
Holding Pattern

Renée Van Halm
Holding Pattern

Renée Van Halm’s extensive knowledge of architectural forms stemming from years of study and travel have led to the development of a unique language relating to the social dimension of architecture, design, and colour. Traditional views of space are dematerialized and reimagined in synthesis with weavings, shreds of origami paper, and diminutive modernist forms. The works on canvas in this exhibition are based on the works of female artists from the 1920s, including painters such as Sonia Delaunay and Varvara Stepanova, textile artists Anni Albers and Marion Dorn, and Bauhaus artists and educators Otti Berger and Gunta Stölzl. Using experimental motifs and colour relationships developed by these artists, Van Halm reintegrates these unconventional patterns within a two- dimensional painting language that envelops the viewer, bringing out obvious and subtle associations between colour and forms.

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BC Binning, Devon Knowles and Renée Van Halm
Leave the Window Open

BC Binning, Devon Knowles and Renée Van Halm
Leave the Window Open

Equinox Gallery is very pleased to present Leave the Window Open, an exhibition that considers the space of architecture and its relationships to materials, memory and abstraction in light of the after-effects of modernism. Three British Columbia-based artists from three distinct generations are included in the exhibition: B.C. Binning, Devon Knowles, and Renée Van Halm. The fields of practice of the artists each examine built environments, taking those observations and insights and transforming them into paintings, sculptures, and installations.

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Renée Van Halm, Vertical Screen, 2023

Renée Van Halm, Vertical Screen, 2023

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Renée Van Halm, Blow Up, 2023