CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/5/2014

The Heart Is Not a Metaphor: Robert Gober at MoMA

"A sink that splays out in two halves. A playpen at a vertiginous pitch. A wax torso, half male and half female. A man's leg emerging from a woman's groin. A bag of diapers atop a bronze 'Styrofoam' block. No matter how startling the imagery, Gober's universe is always clearly legible and makes itself readily available to understanding. This is especially true of the hand-holdable works that he produces alongside his large-scale sculptures. Intimate in mood as well as scale, these are produced in small editions of unique objects, a seeming paradox that means that the items are individually handmade yet nearly identical. Unlike the larger works but like most of Gober's prints, these multiples are always direct replicas of their sources. They indulge the artist's predilection for the lost or discarded, and elevate to art things discovered on the street: an empty Seagram's Gin bottle, a Table Talk pie box, a urology-appointment reminder. For Gober these are significant rescue operations, not unlike the adoption of a dog from a shelter. Humble origins are ennobled and abandonment is transformed into the possibility of love." Untitled (2005-6) and excerpt from curator Ann Temkin's essay are reproduced from Robert Gober: The Heart is Not a Metaphor, the illuminating catalog to Gober's current retrospective.