In 2013 the Hessel Museum of Art presented once again the world is flat., an expansive exhibition of works by Haim Steinbach curated by Tom Eccles and Johanna Burton. The exhibition was on view at the Hessel Museum of Art from June 22 to December 20, 2013, then traveled to the Serpentine Galleries in London from March 5 to May 5, 2014, and then to Kunsthalle Zurich from May 23 to August 17, 2014. A comprehensive catalogue will be published in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries and Kunsthalle Zurich.
About the Artist
Haim Steinbach was born in 1944 in Rehovot, Israel. He has lived in New York since 1957. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 1968 and his MFA from Yale University in 1973. Until the mid-1970s he produced paintings that, responding to minimalism’s limitations, examined the codes of visual language through a calculated placement of colored bars around monochrome squares. He abandoned painting for a series entitled Linopanel, using linoleum as a material that mirrored cultural traditions of flooring (Rococo patterns, Colonial wood, generic tiling, etc.). In the late 1970s his practice delved into spatial questions of visual syntax, honing in on the quotidian rituals of collecting and arranging objects through a continued engagement with the Display works. His presentation of found, bought or gifted objects alters the lens of cultural histories, mapping otherwise concealed bonds of attachment and desire between object, place and viewer.
