Silences

Appearing on the artistic scene in the middle of the 80’s, Robert Gober’s work refuses modernistic tradition to inscribe itself in an economy of daily life, staging the banal often beyond the limits of common taste. He adapts the principal of ready-made, twisting its motifs: sinks, urinals, packaging and doors are displaced, metamorphosed, anamorphosed and hybridized with organic elements. In the work Door with Lightbulb, piles of newspaper are strewn around a door leading to nowhere and surmounted with a light bulb bathing the whole thing in red light. The device works like a trap, relegating the spectator to a sort of anti-chamber on the doorstep of reality, one we fantasize about on the other side, or more metaphorically, on the work’s backside.

Door with Lightbulb, 1992
Installation with a door, electrical system, red light bulb, stacks of newspaper; 244 x305 x 81 cm
ARTIS collection

Wallingford, Connecticut, USA, 1954 – Lives and works in New York