For Sale: Robert Gober Plywood

Robert Gober, Plywood, 1987, 94 3/4 x 47 x 5/8 in., verso, via Christie’s I saw this Robert Gober Plywood at Boesky in 1998, and it blew my Gober sink- and crib- and leg-addled mind. Now it’s for sale. Gober was already fluent in sinks and beds by 1987 and was seeking to try to make, he said, an abstract sculpture. “What I ended up making is an extremely realistic sculpture of a more or less abstract object.” The faces are indeed realistic, the kind of rough veneer used to manufacture plywood. Gober got Peter Ballantine’s help to get a minimum order of veneer—one flatbed truckful—from a mill in Oregon. Yet he did not make a truckful of sculptures from it, just two. In addition to the artisanal dimensions, the Goberian handcrafted moment here is the edges, which are built up from 1/8-inch strips like marquetry to resemble the internal plys of manufactured wood, and to hide the particleboard core within. Robert Gober, Plywood, 1987, 94 3/4 x 47 x 5/8 in., verso, via Christie’s I tried…