Haim Steinbach’s recent retrospective managed to be concise and at the same time emphasize his creative range and stature. The curators chose to omit the artist’s virtuoso early assemblages incorporating a wide variety of domestic materials, beginning instead with the more technically accomplished “shelf pieces”—deadpan displays of consumer kitsch and precious goods—for which the artist became known during the mid-’80s.

In Steinbach’s shelf pieces, the supports are rendered almost precious through the use of elegant plastic laminates, simultaneously evoking and transgressing Minimalist