In his work, Halmans often explores the domestic world and sees a home as a place where life fluctuates between a public and a private sphere. Halmans examines how we as humans live in these two different areas. One could call the artist a 'house expert': he is an accomplished carpenter, plumber and bricklayer and therefore knows everything about houses. Within his work, however, houses or parts of them assume a kind of dream shape. In this respect, his series of "architectural vacuum cleaners" reflects his vision well. For this series, the artist converted a few vacuum cleaners into small architectural households with separate rooms, emphasizing their personal character. In this way the artist built machines that we usually use to keep our households clean, into individual and individual objects. The dirt is now effectively sucked up and can be seen as a metaphor for everything that we collectively collect in both our memories and in the physical translation of them into objects in our house.
That border zone between memory and actual perception is the domain of Halmans. A twilight zone between waking and sleeping, musing and dreaming away. He places the everyday objects - tables, chairs, beds, lamps and alarm clocks - that he finds, makes himself or buys at flea markets in a context that gives them a different meaning. By playing a game with objects, things in Halmans' world are transformed into personal memory images. Memories are therefore essential for the artist. "Forgetting is alarming," he says, "everything has been in vain, meaningless, if you were content with forgetting." Halmans' work often deserves some extra attention, because as a viewer you are only surprised. This is also the case with 'Sad machines', a work that at first sight shows three ordinary alarm clocks. If you look closer, however, you will see that the alarm clocks have been turned around: a simple intervention by Halmans who, due to the changed position, gives the objects a completely different meaning. A very strong image that is actually achieved with minimal resources'.
Quote from the catalog text published on the occasion of the Arts Festival Watou 2014. (Edition vzw P'art, Schore (BE) 2014.