Details:
① Artwork:
Untitled (for Merce Cunningham)
This photographic print is a characteristic example of the artist's ironic use of materials and selective exaggeration. The composition depicts dappled sunlight on a crumpled plastic bag that becomes an exquisite portrait of light and shadow. The bed of straw that cradles the bag resembles a bird’s nest, transforming a discarded piece of litter into something fragile, delicate and purposeful.
Gober draws from his personal experience to handcraft sculptures and other artworks that explore sexuality, religion and politics. The artist frequently works with commonplace objects that can take on multiple meanings—while simultaneously evoking universal feelings of loss and longing.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Robert Gober is an American sculptor and installation artist known for his eerie and evocative reconsiderations of everyday objects. 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. Gober carried these ideas further in sculptures and installations that combine the familiar with the strange. His common motifs include the human body and domestic objects examined, often with humor, through notions such as religion, sexuality, childhood, and change.
Robert Gober was born in 1954 in Wallingford, CT, and is based in New York, NY. He studied at Middlebury College (1972–76), spending his junior year abroad at the Tyler School in Rome before settling in New York City. In 1999, Gober was awarded the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture by the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He participated in the 2001 Venice Biennale and was the subject of a retrospective in 2007 at the Schaulager Museum in Basel, Switzerland. In 2014, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a major survey of his work, the first of its kind in the United States.