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The New York Public Library

 

presents

 

An Artist Dialogue Series Event

 

The Heart Is Not a Metaphor

 

Robert Gober

 in conversation with

Ann Temkin

   

Tuesday December 16, 2014

6:00 p.m.

 

South Court Auditorium

South Court, Lower Level

 

The New York Public Library

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

5^th Avenue at 42^nd Street

New York, NY 10016

917-275-6975

 www.nypl.org

(directions)

 

Auditorium doors open to the public at 5:30 p.m.

All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation

 

Robert Gober’s objects and installations are among the most challenging artworks of the last thirty years. On his emergence in the mid-1980s, with deceptively simple sculptures of everyday objects such as sinks and beds, this New York artist was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant of his generation. Whether in his exacting handcrafted replications of machine-made products, his enigmatic transformations of the human body, or his enveloping theatrical environments, Gober’s formal intelligence is matched by a penetrating reading of his times.

 

To celebrate the publication of Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor, produced in conjunction with the first large-scale survey exhibition of his art in the United States, the artist joins in conversation with Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of Painting at Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, to discuss the his art and career and the themes and motifs to which he has returned throughout the decades. 

 

Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor features an essay by Hilton Als and an in-depth chronology of Gober’s life, written in close collaboration with the artist. The rich selection of images illustrates every phase of his career, and includes previously unpublished photographs from his own archive.

Copies of the book are available for purchase and signing after audience Q&A at the end of event.

 

Robert Gober was born in 1954 in Wallingford, Connecticut. The first large-scale exhibition of his art in the United States, Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor, will be on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from October 4, 2014 through January 18, 2015. He has had numerous one person exhibitions, most notably at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Schaulager, Basel. In 2001 he represented the United States at the 49th Venice Biennale. Gober’s curatorial projects have been shown at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, The Menil Collection, Houston, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in New York.

Ann Temkin is The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the The Museum of Modern Art. Ms. Temkin assumed the role of Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture in 2008, after joining MoMA in 2003 as Curator. During her tenure, Ms. Temkin has worked extensively with her colleagues on reimagining the Painting and Sculpture collection galleries at the Museum. Along with Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not A Metaphor, her exhibitions at MoMA include Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New (2013); Abstract Expressionist New York (2010); Gabriel Orozco (2009); and Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today (2008).  Prior to MoMA, Ms. Temkin was the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1990 to 2003, where she organized such exhibitions as Barnett Newman (2002), Constantin Brancusi (1995), and Thinking is Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys (1994). 

 

Initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni in 2004, Artist Dialogues Series provide an open forum for understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. Artists are paired with critics, curators, gallerists, writers or other artists to converse about art and the potential of exploring new ideas.