The MACS is presenting the first solo exhibition in a museum in Belgium by Haim Steinbach

Haim Steinbach (born 1944) has redefined the object of art through the selection, arrangement and presentation of everyday objects. They are placed on various supports: shelves, cases, stud walls, and scaffolding. Steinbach is known for the wedge-shaped shelf apparatus he devised in 1984. His laminated wood shelf is triangular in section. It distributes a wide range of objects that are part of the quotidian exchange of cultures and functions. These functions operate in the framework of context and intervention. Steinbach’s practice is focused on the play of everyday living, from the home to the store, to the museum.

Like a rebus puzzle, the objects Haim Steinbach presents become the forms of visual language. In this game of gaps between objects, the supports also play their part. Unlike a pedestal which elevates one object above others, a shelf, by virtue of its horizontality, places them on an equal footing. Through Haim Steinbach’s cultural anthropology, the use and exchange value of the smallest familiar or domestic object is transformed into an image referring to something that exceeds it. His approach extends to the appropriation of words that are vernacular language, as in “hello again” and in “tant qu’il y aura des petits matins clairs”. These words manifested in their specific typefaces are taken whole as already existing objects. Like Proust’s madeleine, which embodies the entire world of childhood, the object is larger than it appears, overflowing its immediate meaning and its inherent nature to become a figure of speech, metonymy, and allegory.

For his first solo exhibition in a museum in Belgium, Haim Steinbach presents a range of works over the course of his 40-year artistic practice. Among them he chose to include two important projects that he realised with Belgian art collectors: An Offering: Collectibles of Jan Hoet (1992), a display of various objects Hoet collected and An Offering: Collectibles of Herman Daled (2000), a display of three chairs, three cans of paint, three paint brushes, and a drawing by Steinbach titled 3 that also belonged to Daled.

Exhibition | Haim Steinbach
​Objects for People
​18.05 > 02.11.25
​MACS
​​
​SAVE THE DATES
​PRESS CONFERENCE
​16.05.25 | 11am

VERNISSAGE
​17.05.25 | 18am

Press Kit

Selection of images

El Lissitzky II 1Hello Again (Condensed) 2, 2023

Untitled (Mannequins, Bamana Hunter’S Tunic), 1990 2Ultra Lite, 1987

Related And Different, 1985Shelf With Ajax, 1981

Mypoemisfinished , 2019

Talking Heads, 2022

Objects for People
​Portraits through everyday objects

Conceived by Haim Steinbach to coincide with his exhibition at MACS, the Objects for People project features six individuals from diverse social backgrounds, filmed in their homes as they discuss objects they have arranged in their everyday surroundings. The interviews were conducted informally, without a prearranged questionnaire. The objects, selected at the beginning of each meeting, were then loaned by their owners for the duration of the exhibition, transitioning from the private sphere to the public space of the museum. In this installation, removed from their domestic context, they are arranged by the artist and presented in tandem with the video recordings.

Ranging in age from 14 to 98, the participants in this project share a common trait: they cultivate unique, ritualistic relationships with their objects. The interviews delve into the different ways these relationships manifest – whether in the bonds that the objects establish among themselves, in the ways people connect with one another through the objects, or in their broader social functions as markers of identity and distinction. These portraits subtly reveal how individuals interact with the objects around them and what they seek to express through their selection, presentation, and juxtaposition.

About the artist

Haim Steinbach is an Israeli/American artist (born 1944) living in New York City. He received a BFA from Pratt Institute in 1968 and an MFA from Yale University in 1973. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California San Diego.

The exhibition Objects for People at MACS, marks the artist’s first museum show in Belgium. Past solo exhibitions include the Kurhaus Kleve, Germany and Museion, Bolzano (2018/19); The Menil Collection, Houston, Kunsthalle Zürich, and the Serpentine Galleries, London (2014); Hessel Museum at CCS Bard College, New York (2013); Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, Berkeley (2005); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2000); mumok-Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (1997); Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin (1995); Guggenheim Museum, New York (with Ettore Spalletti) (1993); and CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux (1988/89).

Steinbach’s work has also been included in important group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum, ​ Amsterdam; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; documenta 9, Kassel; 5th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon; and the Venice Biennale 47th International Art Exhibition, curated by Germano Celant.

The artist’s work is in the permanent collections of Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Städel Museum, Frankfurt; The Art Institute of Chicago; and Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin.

About the MACS

Established in the former Grand-Hornu colliery (an example of 19th century industrial archaeology now listed as UNESCO world heritage), the MACS is acknowledged as one of the most successful examples in northern Europe of the conversion of an abandoned industrial site into a cultural centre. Since it was opened in 2002, the museum has indeed offered a broad public the opportunity to discover major international exhibitions within an architectural showcase that combines the site’s history with contemporary creation.

Located away from major urban centres, the Grand-Hornu site is noted for the “genius of the place” which for 20 years has inspired a number of internationally recognised artists, including Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor, Giuseppe Penone, Tony Oursler, Adel Abdessemed and Matt Mullican, to create specific projects here. As an engaged partner alongside the artists, the MACS supports the production of ambitious works, notably through its artists’ residency policy, undertaken by the museum’s team both in situ and extra-muros (LaToya Ruby Frazier, Fiona Tan and Daniel Turner), and pays particular attention to the visual arts scene in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation through its monograph exhibitions.

Together with the Centre for Innovation and Design of the Province of Hainaut (CID), the MACS forms a cultural hub which, has become a popular destination for art lovers and cultural tourism, not least as it can also offer them the pleasures of a park, a gastronomic restaurant and a specialist design and contemporary art shop.