Robert Gober Contemporary Art Exhibition and Sculpture Retrospective at Schaulager

This major retrospective featured approximately 40 sculptures, five large-scale installations, and several groups of drawings spanning three decades of Robert Gober's career. The exhibition explored themes of childhood, sexuality, religion, and power through meticulously crafted replicas of everyday domestic objects that evoke a sense of the uncanny.

For this extensive exhibition at Schaulager, great care was taken to reconstruct significant installations—some appearing for the first time since their creation—alongside rarely seen early works and recent pieces. Over three decades, Robert Gober developed an oeuvre characterized by a compelling mixture of the familiar and the strange. Whether through individual sculptures or entire immersive rooms, Gober utilizes recognizable elements that, when placed in new contexts, create a disquieting effect. His practice addresses deep-seated themes of social, private, and public life, narrated through a unique pictorial language that touches on religion, sexuality, and the complexities of the American cultural landscape during the 1980s and 1990s. The exhibition highlights how Gober’s visual world emerges from everyday domestic life and personal history. By creating meticulously handmade replicas of objects like sinks, doors, and beds, he invites viewers into a space where the boundaries between reality and dreams blur. The intertwining of these sculptures with large-scale installations and drawings demonstrates the formal and thematic density of his work. This panorama captures the artist's confident mastery and his ongoing exploration of the tensions inherent in common objects, offering a rigorous look at an artistic career that has continually reshaped how we perceive the mundane.

This exhibition took place in 2007 and has concluded. Information regarding historical catalogues and publications remains available via the Schaulager website bookshop section.