Untitled

Robert Gober’s insistently handmade, deceptively modest sculptures are re-creations of familiar things—body parts and everyday objects such as children’s furniture, sinks, and urinals. As imitations of the originals, Gober’s works have an uncanny effect, triggering disquieting thoughts about the most commonplace aspects of daily life. At the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York in 1989, Gober constructed two three-sided rooms defined by temporary sheetrock walls. The room seen here was outfitted with wallpaper depicting alternating images of a sleeping white man and a lynched black man hanging from a tree. At the literal center of the installation, the figure of a bride is strongly conjured by a wedding dress supported by a welded steel armature. The delicate dress stands rigid and empty, waiting to be filled. Gober himself has speculated that the relationship between the bride and the sleeping man in the wallpaper is that of husband and wife. Eight hand-painted plaster bags of cat litter line the walls of the room. A material that absorbs or hides waste, the litter serves as a symbolic remedy for the figurative mess of the bride, groom, and murdered black man. More to the point, however, it speaks to the lasting obligations and intimacy of committed love. On the whole, the room—and the veiled story of the imaginary couple it contains—can be considered a meditation on gender, race, romance, and terrible violence in contemporary American life.