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拍品专文
The objects that Haim Steinbach places on his shelves are arranged in such a way that the values we ascribe to them is analogous to the way words shift their meaning when juxtaposed in a poem. For Wittgenstein, learning a language did not require one to learn the meaning of words so much as to comprehend the rules of word-usage. The same is true in Steinbach’s work, in which it is the arrangements that provide the paradigm through which his objects discover their meaning. It is the play of connotations between these objects that defines their relationships and betrays the stasis of their ‘still-life’ appearance.
Steinbach’s use of the shelf frames his sculptures within the social and cultural history of display. The often innocuous, mass-produced or mundane items he acquires from a variety of sources are placed upon shelves, creating a dividing line between their past value and their new role in Steinbach’s art.
In security and serenity #1 two pairs of Gem Lites bookend, on a grey-scale shelf, two pairs of Maiko Hasuike toilet brushes. The combination is, at first glance, incongruous. However, when we are forced to contemplate the two objects solely in terms of their relationship to each other, as Steinbach’s rules insist, the configuration starts to throw open unexpected and nuanced connections. The Gem Lites, with their hypnotic mutations, came very close to achieving the almost impossible, and perhaps absurd, task of turning a lamp into a leisure object. The public novelty it offered to countless living rooms in the late sixties and seventies could not provide a starker contrast to the private sanitary labour invoked by the toilet brush. Unlike the Gem Lite, whose function is to facilitate sight through the provision of light, the toilet brush is ordinarily concealed from view. Furthermore, it is not bound to the vagaries of taste, fashion or novelty, and is far from the conversation piece that the lava lamp aspires to be. Yet there is a twist: in 1985, the year security and serenity #1 was executed, innovative Japanese product design, such as embodied by Maiko Hasuike, was extremely desirable and aspirational. The lava lamp, by contrast, had become outmoded and unfashionable, a piece of kitsch that most assumed had been consigned to history.
As is often the case with Steinbach’s shelf works, the connotations of one object spill into those of the other. It is through this interplay of meaning, value and function that Steinbach reveals how objects become animated and elevated within the complex constellation of our desires.
Steinbach’s use of the shelf frames his sculptures within the social and cultural history of display. The often innocuous, mass-produced or mundane items he acquires from a variety of sources are placed upon shelves, creating a dividing line between their past value and their new role in Steinbach’s art.
In security and serenity #1 two pairs of Gem Lites bookend, on a grey-scale shelf, two pairs of Maiko Hasuike toilet brushes. The combination is, at first glance, incongruous. However, when we are forced to contemplate the two objects solely in terms of their relationship to each other, as Steinbach’s rules insist, the configuration starts to throw open unexpected and nuanced connections. The Gem Lites, with their hypnotic mutations, came very close to achieving the almost impossible, and perhaps absurd, task of turning a lamp into a leisure object. The public novelty it offered to countless living rooms in the late sixties and seventies could not provide a starker contrast to the private sanitary labour invoked by the toilet brush. Unlike the Gem Lite, whose function is to facilitate sight through the provision of light, the toilet brush is ordinarily concealed from view. Furthermore, it is not bound to the vagaries of taste, fashion or novelty, and is far from the conversation piece that the lava lamp aspires to be. Yet there is a twist: in 1985, the year security and serenity #1 was executed, innovative Japanese product design, such as embodied by Maiko Hasuike, was extremely desirable and aspirational. The lava lamp, by contrast, had become outmoded and unfashionable, a piece of kitsch that most assumed had been consigned to history.
As is often the case with Steinbach’s shelf works, the connotations of one object spill into those of the other. It is through this interplay of meaning, value and function that Steinbach reveals how objects become animated and elevated within the complex constellation of our desires.