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ROBERT GOBER An influential sculptor of the American, postmodern generation of the 1980s, Robert Gober’s career was launched in the early 1980s when he first exhibited his sculptures based on household sinks. Inverted Sink, completed in 1985, is a powerful example from this body of work that occupied the artist for almost a decade. Gober is recognized for his enigmatic and often unsettling sculptures and installations that include such things as fragmented body parts, children’s furniture, drains and pipes, sinks, and kitty litter among other equally disparate elements from domestic life. It is his ability to infuse such everyday objects with a psychological intensity and surreal presence that makes his work so compelling. One hallmark of Gober’s sculpture is that it is all meticulously and painstakingly made by hand. In this piece, layers of plaster over wire lath were finished with semi-gloss enamel paint to recreate the porcelain surface of the sink. As a whole, the work has a strong, geometric minimalist presence that is somewhat at odds with the mundane household sink on which it is based. These starkly elegant forms, when recognized as a long, bent sink without a drain or plumbing, suggest a level of human content and meaning. As surrogates for the human body, Gober’s sinks have been associated with gay identity and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. The metaphor of the sink as a place for cleansing and transformation offers yet another approach to reading this piece. By infusing the abstract shape of a commonplace object with beauty, mystery, and a human subtext, Gober succeeds in making the ordinary extraordinary. - Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects |