Untitled

Robert Gober

1999 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Gober creates sculpture, installations, and photography and is perhaps best known for his delicate, ghostly, hand-crafted versions of domestic fixtures, such as drains, beds, doors, and sinks. Through these uncanny replicas, he invests mass-produced objects with personal meaning-the private, unruly desires and memories of the individual. A longtime admirer of Hitchcock, Gober is also master technician of suspenseful and disturbing imagery. In this photograph, what at first glance appears to be a common mousetrap set among some ferns is, upon closer examination, a human-scaled device that uncannily evokes the themes of contagion and control that run throughout the artist's work.

Artist

Robert Gober

Date

1999

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2000