Dominik Halmer

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Artist statement

In his monumental yet playful image installations, Dominik Halmer explores our relationship to a world that, through technology, connectivity, and mobility, seems increasingly accessible—and yet feels ever more alienated from us. His painting draws on the full range of formal possibilities: from illusionism to signs and symbols, to gestural abstraction, different layers of reality are brought together into a new unity. By integrating computer-generated 3D simulations into his work, Halmer points to our longing for scientific predictability, for reliability and stability—while simultaneously pushing these notions into the realm of the absurd. Underlying his work are fundamental questions of visual language: How do narration and meaning emerge? What does an image refer to? When do we perceive something as a coherent whole? How are strength, authenticity, vitality, or objectivity, value and lack of value, freedom or lack of freedom constructed? The result is a complex, analytical form of painting that, due to its sensuous richness, has been described as “baroque constructivism.” Press release (2018) Museum Wiesbaden Dominik Halmer’s paintings and pictorial objects are based on the idea of connecting painting to real space. In his multifaceted works, three-dimensional objects like wooden rings and balls interact with painted elements and gestures. Different levels of reality, which are connected through visual analogies, collide in a poetic and associative whole. Halmer plays...

Artwork