Dino Steinhof
In a hurry
12.07. – 30.08.2015
Whether videos, sound installations, self-made objects, objects found on site or interventions in the exhibition space - Dino Steinhof (*1987) uses a wide variety of media and materials to create new spaces of perception with his diverse works and to break down familiar patterns of thought.
The starting point of Steinhof’s work is the exhibition space itself. In dealing with its architecture and institutional-specific features, he changes the spatial situation through interventions, brings previously unnoticed things to the fore by exchanging or moving familiar elements, or draws our attention to existing structures by adding objects. Last year, Steinhof realized the performative installation “Relaxation”. Five differently colored exercise balls floated in the pond of a hospital park as a symbol of vitality, balance and strength, so that even the balls found the rest and relaxation intended for such an institution. After the wind drove them into ever new formations during the action period, they were then used again as sitting and therapy balls.
The sculptural and installation works of the Berlin-based artist also have a thematic connection to the exhibition venue. However, these connections are often not apparent at first glance, and the objects, projections or sounds initially seem rather irritating. For the work “All Forms” (2013), Steinhof transferred the floor plans of individual rooms of the Kunstakademie Münster to chipboard at a scale of 1:10 and distributed these individual sculptural parts independently of the corresponding rooms in the building, either in isolation or in groups.
In addition to the objects he makes himself, he uses industrially manufactured, technically generated or privately offered products that are now available anytime and anywhere thanks to global networking and the constantly advancing information technology and that shape our lives with an unnoticed matter-of-factness. Lifted out from this mass of objects, they are transferred to the unfamiliar context of the exhibition space and thus raised to a new level of meaning and perception.
Steinhof often changes the material, size or color of the motifs and objects, which he chooses based on the urban, geographical, social or economic characteristics of the environment, towards a more abstract, reduced formal language and an emphasized materiality. In this way, the original origin and function of an object are obscured, the sculptural aspect is emphasized and at the same time new possibilities for association are created.
Dino Steinhof studied under Ayşe Erkmen at the Kunstakademie Münster and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. After participating in exhibitions in Hamburg, Münster, Gelsenkirchen, Copenhagen, Maastricht and Berlin, among others, the Kunsthalle Bremerhaven is now presenting Steinhof’s first institutional solo exhibition under the title “In a hurry”.
Curated by Lena Hartmann.