Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Robert Gober
American; 20th-century, 21st-century
New York, NY: Hill Art Foundation (Exhibition: Sam Moyer: Woman with Holes)
54%
Untitled. 2018-2022. Wood, epoxy putty, cast gypsum polymer, oil and acrylic paint, cotton cloth, glass, fiberglass, epoxy resin, archival paper, archival tape, boar's hair, plaster, pastel, pewter
Time has made Joseph Cornell seem a little crafty and cute, though from the proper angle we can always see what was — what still is — good about him. Gober is less interested in locating this proper angle than in fucking around with all the kitsch that's sedimented on the surface of the diorama's modernist legacy. It's a sort of tongue-in-cheek anti-aesthetic conceptual approach, which has its strengths and its weaknesses. Strengths: the way this sculpture's initial appearance of weekend craftspersonliness — weathered wood! paper snowflakes! — contrasts with its vacuity of both space and meaning; the contrast, too, between the triteness of its materials and the seriousness of some of Gober's compositional techniques. (The snowflakes are taped to the inside as well as to the outside of the glass; this makes the scene fall somewhere between illusory and literal.) Weaknesses: Gober's commitment to the idea of a corny diorama gets in the way of what his object in toto — box and all — really wanted to be as an artwork. The box itself is not sufficiently articulated, and there's only so much you can get out of this assortment of unconnected objects before you realize there's no point in hunting for what connects them. (TFS, 2025)