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Gober created a series of morbid sculptures resembling severed limbs or body fragments. They relate to a powerful childhood memory. Gober's mother, a nurse, told her son how, when attending an operation, she was handed a severed leg. This memory became an obsessive image for Gober. He also describes glimpses of bare male legs as a symbol of homoerotic desire. The sculpture's hyperrealism is subverted by its surreal placement in the gallery. Positioned on the floor as if pushed through the wall the leg seems both ordinary and disturbing.
August 2004
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