Haim Steinbach, every single day
Musée d’art contemporain de Bolzano, Italie
2019

Museion is pleased to present an exhibition by Haim Steinbach (*1944, Rehovot, Israel), one of the most influential contemporary artists, whose work is to be seen in a museum in Italy for the first time in over 20 years. The exhibition is a survey of selected works from the last thirty years, bringing together shelf works, containers, text pieces, wall paintings and large-scale installations.

Since the mid-1970s, Steinbach’s practice has been focused on the transient status of the object and its meaning in art and everyday life. His art works became well known in the mid-1980s with objects that he selected and arranged on shelves. Several purchased or found objects are placed in relations of types, numbers and functions that set in motion patterns of difference, repetition and singularity. By displacing them from their standard place of function or object affinity, and placing them in company of others, context and function take on unpredictable identities. Unexpected encounters occur between different objects on the shelf.  The sneakers, teapots, soaps and Jason Voorhees mask from the movie “Friday the 13th” can be compared to the robbers, who steal the viewer’s conventional convictions, in the above quote by Walter Benjamin.

In his exhibition at Museion, Haim Steinbach focuses on the staging of the museum itself. By using functional museum equipment and turning its intended application on itself, he applies the same gesture of displacement as he does with his objects. Moveable Wolfsburg Walls used by Museion for its exhibitions are now stripped bare or they may be partly covered with plasterboard that supports text or colour. These coloured plasterboards relate to the history of naming and colour coding. Literature is another important point of reference for Haim Steinbach.