Artist:
Haim Steinbach (born 1944 in Rehovot, Israel; lives and works in New York, USA).
Materials:
Walnut veneered wood box, steel, leather Mies van der Rohe daybed, wood coffin, paper mache skeleton; 175 x 257 x 208 cm.
Description:
A massive, two-sided box that contains a folk art coffin with a paper mache skeleton on one side and a sleek daybed by modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on the other.
“This role ‘things’ play is directly addressed in Untitled (daybed, coffin) (1989) too, in which a leather Mies van der Rohe couch is incarcerated in a walnut veneered unit on the other side of which a small coffin, entombing a papier-mâché skeleton, is similarly homed. The couch has been rendered—perhaps even died its own death—by both its box and its status as a look-don’t-touch gallery piece.”
—Oliver Basciano, review of “Haim Steinbach: ‘once again the world is flat’,” Serpentine Gallery, London, Spike 40 (2014): 154.