Robert Gober (b. 1954)

Robert Gober is one of the most compelling artists of the postmodern era and his sculptures of prosaic objects, such as beds, sinks, cribs and isolated fragments of the human body, are imbued with a palpable sense of longing, nostalgia and desire. The Disappearing Sink, executed in 1986, is a complex and powerful example of the artist's most significant body of work, the sinks that he created in New York between 1984 and 1986. Nestled within the corner of two adjoining walls, The Disappearing Sink is hauntingly beautiful in its spare, minimalist form that exudes a powerful sense of anxiety as it disappears into the corner of the wall itself.

For the most part, Gober's sinks are based on childhood memories. The artist vividly recalled the effect of spending hours at his mother's side as she stood over the kitchen sink and the nearly identical sink that his father installed in his basement workshop. Considering the series as a whole, this work is one of the more fantastical, dreamlike embodiments that Gober created during this early period. Its remote placement above the viewer's reach is utterly nonsensical and nestled in a corner, the sink not only lacks plumbing, but is turned on its side, and seems to disappear into the wall itself.

The art historical precedent often cited in relation to Gober's work is Marcel Duchamp's La Fontaine (1917), in which the artist submitted a "readymade" object--a porcelain urinal--to the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. However, in contrast to Duchamp's La Fontaine, which unabashedly asserted and proclaimed its bold 'object-ness,' Gober's Disappearing Sink meanders between what it is and what it is not, in a sort of sculptural netherworld. It is perhaps more akin to Duchamp's Door, 11 Rue Larrey (1927), which exists at the exact crux between open and shut, and is therefore never either one nor the other. Like so many words from an ongoing story, Gober's sinks reach out from the divide into the mind of the viewer, creating a rich world of illusion and paradox, all of which lies hidden in the prosaic nature of his seemingly ordinary work. The Disappearing Sink is a profound example of Gober's best, most compelling series. Complicated and illusory, it conjures a kind of subconscious reverie in the mind of the viewer, capable of revealing hidden memories and latent desires.