Lot Essay
"The scars and traumas inflicted by mainstream family values have become the subject of almost all Gober's works that deal, however obliquely, with childhood and domesticity" (L. Cooke, Robert Gober, London 1993, p. 19). The Dollhouse sculptures, which derived from Gober's employment as a general handyman/carpenter after his arrival in New York City in 1976, were meticulously crafted of actual building materials. Through the dollhouses, Gober stumbled on the imagery for his sculptures of sinks, doors, and wallpapered environments. Their handcrafted nature might be seen as an adult version of the kind of socializing play by which a child gains control of his environment by playing with miniaturized replicas of it. "His making by hand of the spaces and later, the contents--sinks, beds, armchairs, etc.--of the familial house, bespeaks not only of a deep-seated desire to master the home emotionally and psychologically but also to recreate it differently" (ibid.).