Haim Steinbach: an Art of Thinking
Steinbach blends the familiar and unfamiliar to create new art contexts.
“Too often we . . . enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought,” John F. Kennedy once said. Haim Steinbach’s exhibition, Once Again the World is Flat, at the Serpentine Gallery in London, England, brings viewers into this discomforting state — moving beyond conventional ways of analyzing, interpreting and understanding art and into the realm of thought. This comprehensive exhibition brings together a variety of Steinbach’s vast oeuvre: his early work as a Minimalist painter, iconic shelf pieces and a new installation consisting of donated salt and pepper shakers. Shelf with a Cookie Jar (1982) and Untitled (insoles, corks) (1997) are two pieces that demonstrate Steinbach’s use of context and communication to underscore an overarching theme of his work: thinking.
Shelf with a Cookie Jar is placed waist-high on the gallery wall, and consists of seemingly found materials: a plaster and paint skull angled on a wood plank supported by what appears to be a broken and re-assembled pieces of white-chipped wood. This literal title and unusual sculpture leave the viewer wondering: How often is a cookie jar resembling a human skull placed on a plinth and attached to a wall? The dissonance between object and title appear to be intentional, to inspire creative thought. “Very often viewers enter the work in a predictable way, reflecting the way their minds work back onto themselves and projecting their ideology onto things,” Steinbach argues, “They don’t enter the work neutrally or openly.” Recognizing how programmed viewers can be, Steinbach blends the familiar and unfamiliar to create new art contexts. Consequently, his work becomes vulnerable, open to a multitude of meanings and interpretations. Possibilities include monumentalizing death, by placing a skull on a makeshift plinth; the ephemerality of life, as the skull could be seen as a vanitas symbol; a practical purpose, as a cookie jar; or it could simply function as a domestic decoration, as the black and white photograph across from the actual object at the Serpentine Gallery suggests.
Shelf Arrangement for Wachtel’s Living Room is a photograph taken by Steinbach that depicts his Shelf with a Cookie Jar between a fabric-covered chair and a display cabinet in an home environment. This black and white photograph is adjacent to the sculpture at the Serpentine Gallery, and underscores how a given context can influence one’s interpretation. The photograph’s context is critical for two reasons. First, it exposes the private lives of artworks once removed from the gallery or salesroom, engaging viewers in a larger dialogue about an artwork’s role outside of the museum, gallery or salesroom. Second, seeing Shelf with a Cookie Jar in a domestic setting predisposes the viewer to see this sculpture in a certain way; its placement on a blank wall sparks creativity of endless possibilities. Indeed the juxtaposition between the photograph of Shelf with a Cookie Jar and the actual object emphasize the importance and influence of context.
Context not only gives an object new meanings, but also communicates a variety of messages. Steinbach’s Untitled (insoles, corks) (1997) features two sets of shoe insoles and a mound of wine corks placed neatly and horizontally on a shelf. While this piece exemplifies this notion of placing familiar objects in new contexts, it also references the communicative attributes in his work — asking viewers to examine what is being communicated and why. Haim Steinbach suggests that “we communicate through objects just as we communicate through language . . . the way I arrange objects in one line is like the way that we arrange words in a sentence.” And thus, Untitled (insoles, corks) tacitly asks viewers to intellectually engage, interpret and determine the many possible messages evoked.
Pairing insoles and wine corks neatly together on a shelf functions as a means to see very different objects anew. Used insoles can signify a myriad of interpretations, foremost the history of the wearer, places traveled, sights seen and life experiences had. They recall the adage: “try walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.” When applied to Untitled, this phrase can be taken literally — the darkness on the insoles refers to the presumably many miles covered by a likely barefoot female, given the slenderness of the insoles and the foot imprints; or figuratively — a hard life of the original wearer. Paired side-by-side, these insoles ask viewers to conceive of the relationship between the two wearers; or perhaps these are insoles are from the same person from different periods in life. While any number of histories or stories can be generated with used insoles, imagine if the insoles were new. The changed status of the object would impact the communicated message: from a past event towards a future one. Moreover, why did Steinbach present the insoles and not the shoe itself? This presumably deliberate choice gives the viewer even more freedom to think and create the unfolding narrative, instead of revealing information about the wearer through shoe style or brand. Steinbach limits the information conveyed to intellectually bring the viewer to think, create and make connections.
The neighboring pile of wine corks present a similar construct: objects that allude to past events, such as a special occasion or celebration that called for wine. Together, the insoles and wine corks could reference stored histories, and the shelf placement suggests a means of preservation of memories and events. Or, these objects may point to economic disparities. The well-worn insoles could imply a hard life, one that could not afford new insoles; the wine corks are suggestive of a higher-class life that can afford such luxuries. The unusual context enables the viewer’s imagination to run wild.
As Once Again the World is Flat suggests Steinbach wants viewers to think independently, instead of relying on conventional thought, assumptions and interpretations. His interest in context and communication culminate in this thinking process, to which he argues:
“Thinking is not just falling back on some kind of structure that you’ve learned. You can learn and do something by rote, but that’s not thinking. Thinking is knowing how to move in between the standard rules that you need to know, and how to play and mess around with them.”
Steinbach’s apparently simple display and use of everyday objects implicitly asks viewers to think: to see these objects anew. And thus, examining familiar objects in unfamiliar contexts allows one to think about the various messages communicated by the artist, inferred by the viewer, related between the objects and how meanings can shift depending on the environment.
“Once Again the World is Flat” is on show at Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA, until 5 May 2014.
