Overview
Haim Steinbach born 1944, Rehovot, Israel. Lives and works in Brooklyn and San Diego, USA.
Steinbach’s art is a staging of objects in formats that underscore their presence both anthropologically as well as aesthetically. These objects come from a spectrum of social and cultural contexts and are put together in a way that is analogous to the arrangement of words in a poem, or to the musical notes in a score. In the mid-70s, after years of post-minimalist painting, Steinbach noticed how a crowded shelf in his childhood home could function as a relief sculpture, with each item communicating in a specific way. For the next forty years he made it his mission to challenge the way we look at familiar things, beyond their function or everyday significance. He creates platforms, allowing the objects on them—handbags, cereal boxes, Nike trainers or action figures—to shock us with a sudden, unseen novelty that was in fact always there.
Steinbach has had solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Kurhaus, Kleve, Germany; Magasin III Museum and Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Israel; Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland; Serpentine Gallery, London; CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale on Hudson, New York; The Artist’s Institute, New York; Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. His work has been included in group exhibitions at UCCA Beijing; Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, Spain; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; 47th Venice Biennale; Documenta 9, Kassel, Germany.
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