For his first solo museum exhibition in the US in four years, the pioneering post-minimalist artist Robert Gober created a major site-specific installation for The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Gober planned and executed the piece over the course of two years, during which he almost exclusively worked on this project. The resulting, untitled tableau eerily evokes Gober’s conflicted feelings toward Catholicism. The installation centers on a white, life-size sculpture of the Virgin Mary, pierced through the stomach with a large culvert pipe, standing atop a sewer gate. She is flanked by two open, black suitcases, each with its own sewer gate inside. Water cascades down a wooden staircase built into the wall behind her. Below the gates, another scene: a subterranean tide pool littered with sea creatures, pennies, a man’s legs, and a baby wearing a diaper. This arrangement of spiritual symbols, phallic and masculine imagery, and banal modern objects deconstructs traditional givens in Catholicism like heterosexuality, divine femininity, and the hierarchy of heaven and hell.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.
Robert Gober was organized by Paul Schimmel, Chief Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.