One Wall, One Work: Robert Gober
Krakow Witkin Gallery presents 'Untitled' by Robert Gober, a work made by reproducing the lyrics of the Broadway classic 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain” as a potato print.Gober specifically used the imagery from an authorized lyric sheet published by Williamson Music, Inc.
Permission to use the lyrics, unaltered, was granted by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization on 8/18/2010.
“Climb Ev’ry Mountain” is a show tune from 'The Sound of Music,' a musical by Richard Rodger with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.
In both the 1959 stage and 1965 film versions the song, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,' is sung by the Mother Abbess to the aspiring but questioning prospective nun, Maria, as encouragement to step toward attaining her dreams and pursuing her own path.
“You must find the life you were born to live,” the Mother Abbess says before singing the inspirational anthem.
As subject matter and vehicle for Gober's work, reproducing an image of the sheet music to this song engages references to three time periods (1938, the period depicted within the musical [right before and directly after the Nazi German annexation of Austria], 1959, when the musical opened, and 'today' [the moment when a viewer looks at the worn and pristine materiality of the work]).
Furthermore, the technique Gober chose to use in creating the print edition, a potato print, was a printmaking tour de force.
This intense challenge can be helpful to acknowledge to understand some of the themes surrounding Gober's work.
'The Sound of Music' and 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain' are well known and yet how much of the themes of love (music over severity), self-determination (in particular, for women), protest (refusing to support the Nazi war effort), and survival (escaping Nazi-controlled Austria) are glossed over in our current thinking on the musical and song?
A potato print is a rudimentary printmaking technique often used by young students, using half of a potato rather than metal or stone plate.
Gober has taken this makeshift single-use medium and refined it to such an extreme that he could create a highly detailed, illusionistic image repeatedly (in an edition of 15).
The themes of 'how what can work for children can also be used by adults' and that 'there can be creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable situations' feel directly related to 'The Sound of Music,' nostalgia in general, and the present moment.
Robert Gober (b. 1954) has participated in numerous international exhibitions, among them five Whitney Biennials and five Venice Biennales, including the 2001 Biennale, where he represented the United States.
His work was the subject of a large-scale survey at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2014.
Other one-person museum exhibitions have been organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Dia Center for the Arts in New York, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Schaulager in Basel.
| COST | ↑ top |
Free and open to the public
| WEBSITE | ↑ top |
www.krakowwitkingallery.com/exhibition/one-wall-one-work-robert-gober-2/
| LOCATION | ↑ top |
10 Newbury Street, Boston, MA, 02116 map
Phone: 6172624490
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- One Wall, One Work: Robert Gober, 10/19/24-12/7/24
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