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Lot Essay
Through his depiction of seemingly mundane objects such as a sink, crib, chair, along with isolated body parts, American artist Robert Gober explores themes of family, religion, sexuality, alienation and memory, both collective and private. With painstaking and meticulous detail he renders these thought-provoking sculptures by hand to build a universe that investigates the psychological and symbolic power of the objects in our everyday lives. In Gober's 1992 work, Prison Window, the artist creates a space imbued with a deep sense of longing and frustration in order to elicit a strong emotional response from the viewer. One of the most engaging and thought-provoking works of Gober's oeuvre, the artist uses a deceptively spare two-foot square section of a wall to create an emotional and psychological experience.
A lasting theme in Gober's work is the appropriation and reconfiguring of simple everyday objects in a way that highlights their hidden symbolism. One such depiction is Gober's, Untitled, 1993 which depicts a chrome-plated bronze drain. The work appears initially to be a ready-made, but it is in fact painstakingly forged to resemble Gober's idealized vision of a drain, one that he felt carried a peculiar psychological and emotional charge. The symbolic power of the drain is invested with a complex array of ideas relating to the human body and its erotic pleasures, which attenuates its domestic role as a filter or portal. Similarly to the drain, Gober uses the imagery of a window in Prison Window, which presents a passage or portal. A gateway from inside to out, from containment to freedom, windows typically serve as a representation of movement. In Gober's typical fashion, he takes this imagery associated with a window and transmutes it to an experience in which the viewer questions his or her own association and relationship to the object. The viewer is struck with a sense of longing that one often associates with feelings of containment, which are underscored by the use of iron bars to block the accessibility of the window.
A square 24-inch relief cut into a white wall, backlit by fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs, presents the realistic image of a sunlit window. But instead of depicting this window as an opening, Gober places three black forged-iron bars across the relief, translating it into an inaccessible space. Although windows are often viewed as a threshold to the outside world or as a means of escape, Gober renders this work frustratingly and disappointingly impenetrable. By placing the window above the viewer's reach and encasing it with bars, the usually inviting representation of a window is replaced by a sealed passageway. This obscured window represents Gober's fascination with creating spaces and art works that serve as an odd simulacrum of their real life counterpart. While realistic, these works are slightly eerie and peculiar. Through such familiar and apparently innocuous objects, Gober creates a physical parallel world that exists alongside the real one, whereby he is able to expose the uncanny in the everyday.
There is a long tradition in the history of art of appropriating the imagery of a window to depict longing and also containment. Henri Matisse's La fenêtre (fenêtre ouvert à collioure), 1905, a polychromed depiction of an open window overlooking a harbor scene, conveys a similar sense of longing. While Gober's depiction of a window is more somber and subdued than Matisse's spirited palette, the central theme of the two works remains. In Matisse's work the viewer is placed on the inside of a building looking out toward a beautiful seascape. While the bright colors lend an upbeat feel to the overall tone of the work, the viewer is still sights the harbor from a confined room and is set apart from the scene. This same sense of separation is conveyed in Gober's work in which the entire space the viewer occupies is transformed into a prison cell and is separated from the outside world and the sunlit blue sky that is depicted through the window. While Gober does not construct a completed installation with a prison cot and a barred door, he implies this scenario and atmosphere through the emotional and psychological experience elicited when the viewer interacts with Prison Window. This creation of a space that is charged with tension is indicative of Gober's goal of finding a balance between the representation of an everyday object and the creation of a world that is filled with strangeness and distortion.
If looked at ontologically, Gober's work can be said to have a goal of identifying the line between comfort and uncertainty in the ordinary things that are our anchors. In addition, the artist succeeds in creating a physical, parallel world that exists alongside the real one: "On first encounter, the perceived situation of Gober's work is always ablaze with the signifiers of high Modernism: the pristine rooms, the privative objects, the exquisite craft and refined sense of placement, the subtle evocations of Duchamp and Magritte, Artschwager and Judd. Ultimately, however, all of this nuance and evocation takes on the coppery taste of bitter irony, as Gober (after generations of artists exploring the stuff of their lives in service of this tradition) exploits the stuff of this tradition in the service of his life; further, I think, we might consider Gober's project as evocative of his own generation, exploiting in a radical way the apparently reduced options left open to it" (D. Hickey, as quoted in Robert Gober, Dia Center for the Arts, 1993, pp. 54-55).
A lasting theme in Gober's work is the appropriation and reconfiguring of simple everyday objects in a way that highlights their hidden symbolism. One such depiction is Gober's, Untitled, 1993 which depicts a chrome-plated bronze drain. The work appears initially to be a ready-made, but it is in fact painstakingly forged to resemble Gober's idealized vision of a drain, one that he felt carried a peculiar psychological and emotional charge. The symbolic power of the drain is invested with a complex array of ideas relating to the human body and its erotic pleasures, which attenuates its domestic role as a filter or portal. Similarly to the drain, Gober uses the imagery of a window in Prison Window, which presents a passage or portal. A gateway from inside to out, from containment to freedom, windows typically serve as a representation of movement. In Gober's typical fashion, he takes this imagery associated with a window and transmutes it to an experience in which the viewer questions his or her own association and relationship to the object. The viewer is struck with a sense of longing that one often associates with feelings of containment, which are underscored by the use of iron bars to block the accessibility of the window.
A square 24-inch relief cut into a white wall, backlit by fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs, presents the realistic image of a sunlit window. But instead of depicting this window as an opening, Gober places three black forged-iron bars across the relief, translating it into an inaccessible space. Although windows are often viewed as a threshold to the outside world or as a means of escape, Gober renders this work frustratingly and disappointingly impenetrable. By placing the window above the viewer's reach and encasing it with bars, the usually inviting representation of a window is replaced by a sealed passageway. This obscured window represents Gober's fascination with creating spaces and art works that serve as an odd simulacrum of their real life counterpart. While realistic, these works are slightly eerie and peculiar. Through such familiar and apparently innocuous objects, Gober creates a physical parallel world that exists alongside the real one, whereby he is able to expose the uncanny in the everyday.
There is a long tradition in the history of art of appropriating the imagery of a window to depict longing and also containment. Henri Matisse's La fenêtre (fenêtre ouvert à collioure), 1905, a polychromed depiction of an open window overlooking a harbor scene, conveys a similar sense of longing. While Gober's depiction of a window is more somber and subdued than Matisse's spirited palette, the central theme of the two works remains. In Matisse's work the viewer is placed on the inside of a building looking out toward a beautiful seascape. While the bright colors lend an upbeat feel to the overall tone of the work, the viewer is still sights the harbor from a confined room and is set apart from the scene. This same sense of separation is conveyed in Gober's work in which the entire space the viewer occupies is transformed into a prison cell and is separated from the outside world and the sunlit blue sky that is depicted through the window. While Gober does not construct a completed installation with a prison cot and a barred door, he implies this scenario and atmosphere through the emotional and psychological experience elicited when the viewer interacts with Prison Window. This creation of a space that is charged with tension is indicative of Gober's goal of finding a balance between the representation of an everyday object and the creation of a world that is filled with strangeness and distortion.
If looked at ontologically, Gober's work can be said to have a goal of identifying the line between comfort and uncertainty in the ordinary things that are our anchors. In addition, the artist succeeds in creating a physical, parallel world that exists alongside the real one: "On first encounter, the perceived situation of Gober's work is always ablaze with the signifiers of high Modernism: the pristine rooms, the privative objects, the exquisite craft and refined sense of placement, the subtle evocations of Duchamp and Magritte, Artschwager and Judd. Ultimately, however, all of this nuance and evocation takes on the coppery taste of bitter irony, as Gober (after generations of artists exploring the stuff of their lives in service of this tradition) exploits the stuff of this tradition in the service of his life; further, I think, we might consider Gober's project as evocative of his own generation, exploiting in a radical way the apparently reduced options left open to it" (D. Hickey, as quoted in Robert Gober, Dia Center for the Arts, 1993, pp. 54-55).