Haim Steinbach. Objects for People
MACS, Belgium

MAY 18-NOVEMBER 25, 2025

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 realized 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.

A MOTHER, a groundbreaking new play with original songs, is the story of first love, first grief, and theater camp. Set in Miami Beach circa 1980, Jessica Hecht weaves together teenage memories of her boyfriend Daryl, played by Fergie L. Philippe, as they disco dance away the last two weeks of the 1970s just as racial tensions in Miami rise. Jessica simultaneously steps into Brecht’s banned play The Mother, taking on the role of a woman who becomes an activist through the revolutionary work of her son. An unforgettable ride through layers of memory and invention. Will there be singing in dark times? Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times. And…there will also be disco dancing, water ballet, and chicken soup.

SPECIAL EVENTS
Continue your experience in the world of A Mother with a disco night, gospel concert, talkbacks, and more. Aquire Gwen Smith’s A Mother: Catalogue of Coincidence (Based on a Robert Rauschenberg Intervention in The Miami Herald Sunday TROPIC magazine issue December 30 1979 executed in the dawn of the 1980s.)

BUY THE ART GWEN MADE password: reality

Miniotics

GROUP SHOW CURATED BY POP GUN at WEATHER REPORT CHICAGO

Thursday, Apr 11, 2024 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

This new publication from Justine Kurland presents two interwoven narratives drawn from the road trips across the United States that she undertook with her young child between the years 2005 and 2010.

Limited edition of 1,000 signed copies including a signed and numbered print handmade by the artist.

Especially for the event at Dashwood Books Kurland has curated a series of six limited edition zines entitled the Mother Zine Series. Published by Dashwood in an edition of 100 copies, they are each 20pp, staple bound color zines that are sold together with an obi band along with This Train exclusively available at the signing event on April 11th. Zines by Elizabeth Pedinotti Haynes, Jacky Marshall, Qiana Mestrich, Jacquelyne Pierson, Júlia Pontés, and Gwen Smith..

Skowhegan 2023

The Chance Whale

the interview for my first solo show at Baxter Street Camera Club of New York

Solo Show

December 14, 2022

Baxter Street, CCNY
New York, NY

The Chance Whale

November 22 Newsletter

haiku & poetry readings

Closing Party about time Pamela Sneed Laurel Gitlen gallery NYC July 22, 2022

Everybody Press Hot Poets of Summer Leroy’s Place Park Slope Aug. 13, 2022

NYCPOFEST Governors island (9/11/2022) *see Polaroids below.

print sale-

I belong to this.

Speciwomen is holding a print sale to benefit the publication of a special catalog of the show I curated I Belong to This. A portion of the sales goes to support the artists. 8x10 photographs are all 100$.

The artists in this show all work in various ways using photography to imagine a better future based on our interconnection and shared your experiences. I’m so grateful and inspired by these artists, and to Huxley Parlour @huxleyparlour for exhibiting the show, and to Philo Cohen @speciwomen for publishing the catalog through her magazine Speciwomen.

Justine is offering a never before editioned Girl Pictures print. And all of these amazing artists have donated phenomenal prints.

The Sale only runs from April 1-9 so don’t miss the opportunity to own a piece of work and to support the publication.

*Portal to the new wave using Far from Vietnam and Ferlengetti’s Her as a reference, Boulder, Colorado, 1988-1989/ 2021, Gwen Smith

Baxter St Residency Program

Each year, Baxter St at CCNY invites emerging lens-based artists living in New York City to apply for the Baxter St Residency Program. This residency offers lens-based artists much-needed workspace in New York City as well as access to the Baxter St at CCNY community and programs.

Each resident will be granted a solo exhibition at Baxter St at CCNY after their term of residency. Residents will also be part of our robust programming, including a public conversation, a video interview, and a one-on-one meeting with an Art Advisory Committee Member.

The Baxter St Residency Program is made possible by generous support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; The Jerome Foundation; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; and Fujifilm.

Speciwomen is dedicated to bringing printed matter to its audiences, additionally to ongoing digital content.

Support the mission by buying postcards self-published by Speciwomen

Breonna Taylor

by Gwen Smith

The Black Woman Project Vol. 2

11 out of 2 million .

thanks for the love Newspaper Club.

Well, 2021 was certainly... a year. Another year of challenges and bright spots, with different experiences for everyone — as the diverse mix of newspapers we printed shows. Here are 11 projects that stood out from over 2 million newspapers that went through our presses in 2021.

One of the highlights was seeing the return of live sports, weddings and exhibitions and the continued emergence of fascinating passion projects that flourish when the world is tilted on its axis.

Thanks for keeping our presses fuelled with creativity — and here's to another year in print!

Painters Drawing

Lucy Tarquinio, Devan Avadikian, David Sami, Gwen Smith, Julian Chen, Amy Sillman, Tayla Krupnick, Oluwaseni Akinyemi, Enzo Iwase, Walter Price, Ethan Kramer, Vanessa Gully-Santiago, Jessica DickinsonWallace Dos Santos, Ornella Polo, Haleigh Collins, Alec Rasmussen, Braden Hollis, Anthony DiBattista, Nico Chiat,

curated by Lucy Tarquinio, Devan Avadikian

41 Cooper Gallery

TUE, NOV 16, 6PM - SAT, NOV 20, 2021 2PM

ORIGIN

Justine Kurland Studio presents

the first solo exhibition of work by Gwen Smith in New York City.

Dates: November 13 – 23, 2021

Opening reception: Saturday, November 13, 4 – 8pm

Address: 45 Main St #723, Brooklyn, NY

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 5pm

In early 2021, Smith dreamt the birth of her great-grandfather, Reverend Edmund Oxley. This vision prompted Smith to begin ORIGIN, a series of collage-paintings which examine the self-replicating rhythms of art and human biology.

Smith dissects her own family albums, cutting apart photographs of her childhood and incorporating them into vibrantly colored paintings of female reproductive anatomy. Portraits of Smith’s ancestors emerge from psychedelic wombs, tracing the umbilical cord of her lineage through the folds and curves of the vaginal canal. Contemporary images of the artist herself morph into labia minora and majora, framing kaleidoscopic portals through which we see cycles of life passing over and over. In ORIGIN, the photographic art of mechanical reproduction becomes intertwined with the physical act of giving birth.

Much like Smith’s previous series The Black Woman Project, which celebrates the brilliant Black Women who make up her intellectual and cultural genealogy, ORIGIN pays homage to the power of the Black mother as a giver of life, the wellspring from whom history emerges.

Screen Shot 2021-10-07 at 2.50.54 PM.png

BOOK ART

I belong to this

curated by Justine Kurland

‘I belong to this brings seventeen artists together around themes of self and family, private rites and communal ritual, along a continuum of becoming. The title of the show is from Ariana Reines’s poem “Save the World”, and can be read as a declaration of identification, a promise of solidarity, or a blurring of self into multitudes. These artists mark an intractable this. The camera points, more like an ear than an index finger, in the direction of what is felt rather than seen and to those invisible threads that hold us together.’ – Justine Kurland

HUXLEY-PARLOUR GALLERY

3-5 Swallow Street
London, W1B 4DE

*Exquisite Family Album- Sister Sledge x Stage Coach Mary, whipped Peter (Gordon) and my first passport picture, 2021, Gwen Smith

Talk and Book Signing: Gwen Smith

in conversation with Parrish Museum director Kelly Taxter, and chief curator Corinne Erni, and scientist collaborator Beth Coleman

Gwen Smith discusses her recent work utilizing book arts including The Black Woman Project (Vol. 1, 2 ,3) Selfie Suppliment and Island: Jamaicia v. Martha’s Vineyard - the search for indigenous pathways and family history

Recorded at the Parrish Museum July 18, 2021.

The first 21:10 minutes show films that exemplify the process of making The Black Woman Project Vol. 1, 2, 3.

1 & 2 soundtrack by River Steinbach, 3- Four Women, Nina Simone inspired by the Julie Dash film of the same name.