Haim Steinbach
November, 10th 2007 – January, 5th 2008
From the press releaseFor his new exhibition in Paris, his first at the Galerie Laurent Godin, Haim Steinbach revisits his work’s origins, notably his installation at Artists Space in New York in 1979, where he associated wallpaper with personal obsessions of friends and relatives displayed on shelves.Here, for the first time, he seizes on food products; he suppresses the shelf, for which he substitutes a simple wall painting, and he hangs in the gallery space a grouping of country hams from Auvergne, whose strange and spectacular plasticity makes us question our connection with the fascinating duality of things. On one hand, these are objects of greed and desire, on the other hand strange and repugnant pieces of dead bodies…
“The closest I can get to my first impression of l’Ambassade d’Auvergne (a restaurant facing the gallery space) is the phenomenon of the olfactory. But interestingly what took me there was not so much the sense of smell but of the eye and I recall that somehow I was also struck with a deeper sense of horror as well as awe, like good and bad taste at the same time. I believe it was smell that caught my eye and yet I do not recall smelling anything!
Still, I anticipate that what may take over in the work I intend to do for the show would be the experience of the olfactory. How is it that rotting, decaying organic matter may transcend life and death and somehow become sublime. How is it that being in the presence of a piece of a dead pig may be a most delicious experience. Evidently culture as force has the capacity to transform any ugly, strange, and offensive thing into beauty or is it beauty that may fall in love with the beast? Another way of looking at it would be that possibly the show I am planning would be about the amelioration of the horror of decay through death, through gastronomy. Early last July I visited Paris to see Laurent Godin’s gallery space. Then Laurent took me to lunch at l’Ambassade d’Auvergne, across the street. It was a traditional French restaurant in furnishings that while somewhat updated in style, nonetheless evoked the aura of an old time tavern.But what mostly marked this distinction were smoked legs of pigs hanging here and there from the ceiling; conception,extinction, natural, supernatural…” HS
Haim Steinbach
N O N
Published September 2002
Haim Steinbach
(Wild Oats)
Published April 2003
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