Steinbach presents objects, ranging from the natural to the ordinary, the artistic to the ethnographic, giving form to art works that underscore their identity and inherent meanings.
[2] Steinbach participated with Group Material, an artist-run collaborative which exhibited in stores, apartments, and subways, and also showed his work at the new galleries in the East Village, including Jay Gorney Modern Art and Nature Morte.
By the second half of the decade, Steinbach's work gained increasing attention in both America and Europe, and was included in various international shows: "New Sculpture", at the Renaissance Society of Chicago and "Prospect 86", at the Kunstverien in Frankfurt, in 1986; "El arte y su doble", at the Fundacion Caja de Pensiones, Madrid, "Les courtiers du desire", at the Pompidou Center, Paris, and the Group Material installation at Documenta 8, Kassel, in 1987; "Horn of Plenty", at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and "A Forest of Signs", at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1988.
One person shows were organized at the capc Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux in 1988, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (with John Knight), in 1991, the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, in 1992, and at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York (with Ettore Spalletti), in 1993.
Throughout the 1990s, his work has been included in many important shows, for example Metropolis, at the Martin-Gropius Haus, Berlin in 1991; Documenta 9, Kassel and The Boundary Rider, Ninth Sydney Biennale in 1992; Viaggio Verso Citera, XLV Venice Biennale in 1993; Passions privée at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1995; NowHere, at the Louisiana Museum of Art Humblebeak in 1996; Città Natura, at the Botanical Gardens and the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, and Passato, Presente, Futuro XLVI Venice Biennale, in 1997; Pop/ Abstraction at the Museum of American Art, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia in 1998; Dinge in der Kunst des XX.