HAIM STEINBACH: EVERY SINGLE DAY: MUSEUM KURHAUS KLEVE, GERMANY

With a comprehensive solo exhibition by Haim Steinbach (* 1944 in Rehovot, Israel), the Museum Kurhaus Kleve presents one of the most influential contemporary artists. Steinbach decisively shaped the contextual survey of objects by working with objects and their display from the start, unlike his painter colleagues. Falsely referred to as a follower of "consumer culture" due to his use of consumer goods, his work is less about the status as a commodity than the selection and arrangement of everyday objects and the associated properties. Haim Steinbach's solo exhibition in the Museum Kurhaus Kleve is being created in cooperation with the Museion in Bozen.

While important houses such as the Serpentine Gallery in London or the Kunsthalle Zürich have shown Haim Steinbach in the past five years, the last major solo exhibition in Germany took place 18 years ago. The exhibition in the Museum Kurhaus Kleve therefore wants to update the reception of Steinbach's work, which is urgently needed, and make a decisive contribution to the presentation of the American debate on sculpture. In terms of content, the show focuses on the idea of ​​color and its relationship to the surrounding space (color in the object, as an object and in space). Steinbach has been interested in the connection between color and the movements of color field painting and minimalism since the early 1970s. The focus of his research is a contemporary examination of modern instruments, especially color, shape and grid, which were the first to be systematically examined by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Steinbach transforms these elements into a mobile construction, which is set in motion by the viewer's movement and questions the means of the exhibition presentation as well as the viewer's point of view. Standardized building materials such as aluminum scaffolding, which are normally used for built-in walls in museums, as well as cut and colored gypsum plasterboard, which function in conjunction with the scaffolding as precarious paintings or objects, are used. The transparency of the installed grid walls makes it possible to relate different elements and to view them individually or in combination depending on their position and perspective. Last but not least, the colored boxes represent constantly changing entities that relate to the history of abstract painting as well as to the history of music and film. Like the object at Steinbach, color is continuously subject to change, various references are simultaneously present: “My concept of color, linguistics, the object is in continued state of challenges. It's interesting how slippery language, imagination, perception and communication are. Which blue is the blue? Yves Klein Blue, The Blues, blue skies? ” The work titles stimulate a cinematic element, the works are called "yellow submarine", "blue velvet", or "fried green tomatoes". The uniqueness of the exhibition in the Museum Kurhaus Kleve is that it starts a game with the different meanings of the term construction (virtual, industrial, sculptural, linguistic), which includes both individual works and the overall installation.

The exhibition is complemented by older works by the artist as well as works from the museum's collection. A catalog appears with contributions by Isabelle Graw, Giorgio Agamben, the directors and curators. The project takes place in close cooperation with Haim Steinbach.