Halmans makes something exceptional from everyday images. What at first glance looks homely and recognizable appears in the second instance not functional and peculiar. He uses everyday objects that he finds, makes himself or buys at flea markets and deforms these objects until they have a different meaning.
Much of his work is about houses and living, but by stretching, reducing and adapting, rooms and furniture become unusable. Everyone recognizes for example the Bruynzeel kitchen cabinets from the 70s, but by reducing them to a miniature format, they turn into intriguing sculptures. From all the bedrooms in the houses where he lived until now, he makes a stack in The bedrooms where I still wake up (1996 - present). This way his memories take shape and he takes the viewer along in his past that is connected to these intimate spaces.
While his houses are made uninhabitable, other objects are surprisingly habitable. A row of books on a shelf suddenly turns out to be a house complete with windows, doors and a staircase. Household furniture mixes with each other into something new: a vacuum cleaner has suddenly become an apartment building. Halmans sometimes occupies himself with the housing of animals: Condocage looks like a birdcage, with perches and all. For a bird however the object is totally uninhabitable: the mesh is not only on the outside, but also fills the inside.
All his work is made with great craftsmanship and constantly puts the viewer off the track.