Dream Home (Installation View CAG, Vancouver)
2002. Mdf, acrylic paint. 20' x 15' x 20'. Collection: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax
Photo Credit: Kim Clarke

 

© Renée Van

Dream Home takes as its subject real estate. I selected the largest and smallest properties for sale on Vancouver's West Side on a given date.  The small property, albeit an apartment, is under 300 square feet whereas the largest is more than 15,000. The two sites represent opposing attitudes to the project of home; the larger revivalist structure is steeped in nostalgia, isolated and bunker-like; the smaller a bottom-line, efficient machine where the living space fits like an article of clothing.   To emphasis the relationship to home and individuality, the outside of each room/object is painted a different tint of the many whites available in our local paint stores. The installation of room models is accompanied by 6 conventional looking water colour paintings on paper, collectively called Listings, the largest houses for sale in Vancouver at the time the work was prepared in the Spring of 2002. 

 

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< “Just as the dream home is caught between the image and model, so it also resides in the discursive intervals that circulate between the space of the gallery, and the space of the city, between strategies of representation and mechanisms of identification.”

Sherry McKay, Catalogue Essay