R obert Gober’s Untitled from 1997 is a profoundly significant and rarefied object that is evocative of the artist’s revolutionary approach to storytelling with the resemblance of found objects. Conceptual and minimal in its aesthetic, Untitled is striking with its eerily familiarity of seemingly banal iconography - a lone child-sized plastic chair, with a kitsch floral-patterned tissue box perched on the seat, is quietly situated above a glistening metal drain. Haunting and arresting, Untitled embodies Gober’s intended effect of minimal forms with maximum content. “The fact that the content must be intuited by the viewer… as just cleverly manufactured found objects, typifies Gober’s circumspection. His works are enigmatic but not coy, morally drive but not aggrieved. They radiate a quality that is as rare in life as it is in art: character,” Peter Schjeldahl, “Found Meanings, A Robert Gober retrospective,” The New Yorker, October 13, 2014

Rendering the pathos of life with subtle and brilliant dexterity, Untitled embodies Gober’s enduring commitment to creating compelling art that addresses life, death, intimacy, abuse, faith, and oppression. Raised in a devoutly Catholic household in Wallingford, Connecticut, to Lithuanian and Italian immigrants, Gober’s vivid childhood memories of life in working-class suburbia, and his t.mes as an altar boy, directly informed his highly personalized and emotional approach to conceptualizing everyday objects. Gober’s childhood memories are thus memorialized in Untitled, which radically combines the very pinnacle of his conceptual artistic practice, the chair and the drain, into a singularly tantalizingly nostalgic object. “I think the benefit of a Catholic childhood is your belief in visual symbols as transmitters of information and clues about life, whether it’s the mystery of life or life in general. You grow up trying to interpret, worshipping, visual symbols. It’s a body-soaked imagery that you’re looking at.” (Robert Gober in “Robert Gober retrospective, MoMA, New York,” by Julia Belcove, Financial t.mes s, August 8, 2014).

The significance of Untitled can be traced to the origins of Gober’s production, as the chair, tissue box and drain, each produce personal insight to the artist’s life and experience yet yields broad public meaning. Shaped by Gober’s keen sense of intuition and observation, the re-construction of utilitarian household objects from his generation signifies the careful assemblage of their symbolism. The small, generic, child-sized, plastic chair with a floral-patterned tissue box resting on the seat, is deeply evocative of paternal authority. Untitled embodies those difficult visits to the principal, school nurse or the child psychiatrist – conjuring an overwhelming immediacy with its profundity.

Utterly uncanny its lifelike rendering, Untitled, represents the very pinnacle of Gober’s technical mastery as a sculptor and groundbreaking practice of transforming domestic objects into vessels charged with emotional potency. Gober fabricated the source chair he found on one of his Long Island beach walks, sculpted and cast the chair in plastic, painted the floral packaging on a bronze facsimile of a cardboard box, and tendered the paper to preserve its natural appearance. Through Gober’s handmade and meticulous fabrication of each element in Untitled, Gober is creating an ingenious fusion of high-low within this this rarefied form; the high of materiality of the hand-painted cast chair, and the low of the mundane nature of a used plastic chair. The present work has been widely documented at the Hirshhorn Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Unlike any minimalist sculptor of his generation, Gober’s intentionality in creating Untitled creates an astoundingly potent stimulus within the viewer. Gober’s placement of the metal floor drain beneath the chair propels the psychological intensity of Untitled even further, as it acts as a conduit to the viewer’s subconscious, signaling a moment of baptismal reckoning. Having worked a summer job at the Water and Sewer department in Wallingford, the present work captures Gober’s early fascination with pipes, drains and running water. Untitled compels an intimate and haunting viewing experience, that requires the viewer to completely surrender and a willingness to mirror the reality that the artist’s work places before us. To engage with Untitled, the viewer must physically bend over the chair and drain to discern the sculpture, prompting an almost religious and ceremonial overtone.

The offering of Untitled marks the very first chair over drain to ever appear at auction, underscoring its exceptional rarity. The work also boasts impressive provenance, hailing from the prestigious collects ion of Sherry and Joel Mallin, stewards of works of the great conceptual rigor, and long terms collects ors and supporters of Robert Gober. Entirely fresh to market, Untitled was first acquired by the Mallins from Paula Cooper Gallery, New York in 1998, and has remained in their collects ion since. Ultimately by expressing his own life experiences in Untitled, Gober effectively transforms domestic objects into the very fragments of human existence.

A Life In Art: The Mallin collects ion

Artist

Robert Gober