Gober, Robert

▪ American artist

born Sept. 12, 1954, Wallingford, Conn., U.S.

      American sculptor and installation artist known for his eerie and evocative reconsiderations of everyday objects. His common motifs include the human body and domestic objects, with which he examined, often with humour, such notions as religion, sexuality, childhood, and change.

      Gober studied at Middlebury College (1972–76), spending his junior year abroad at the Tyler School in Rome, before settling in New York City. After a brief period as a painter, he drew notice in the 1980s with a series of haunting sculptures loosely based on the forms of household items such as sinks, drains, and playpens. Non-functional and often altered in scale from their sources—Open Playpen (1987), for example, lacks the protective bars on one side, while X Playpen (1987) effectively reduces the “play” area to one of two tiny triangular spaces—these sculptures seemed exercises in wistful memory, exposing a stark poetry embedded within the mundane and the domestic.

      Gober carried these ideas further in sculptures and installations that commingled the familiar with the strange. Untitled (1990), in the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, is a realistic sculpture of the lower part of a man's leg, isolated as if it were emerging from or disappearing into a wall. Replete with shoe, sock, a bit of pants leg, and an area of hairy skin exposed, the sculpture suggests at once both masculine presence and its disempowerment. At first glance, Gober's Untitled (1997), in the Milwaukee Art Museum, seems to be simply an open suitcase on the floor. Upon further examination, however, the bottom of the suitcase opens to a small installation beneath the museum floor featuring seaweed, coins, running water, and a sculpture of the legs of both an adult and a child. Such installations eluded simple interpretation, but their air of mystery and sense of vulnerability exposed was central to Gober's concerns and made his enigmatic objects popular attractions throughout the art world.

Additional Reading

Two exhibition catalogues are Richard Flood, Gary Garrels, and Ann Temkin, Robert Gober: Sculpture + Drawing (1999); and Hal Foster and Paul Schimmel, Robert Gober (1997).

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