Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor

Robert Gober - Virgo Sun, Pisces Moon, Unknown rising

This show has had a lasting impact on me since I saw it over 10 years ago. Virgos love fragments, body parts, and details rendered uncanny in isolation. The effect can be scary which is why we find so many Virgos in the horror genre (see previous rec), but it can also feel ritualistic and transcendent. Hilton Als writes a great essay about Gober’s work in this book and how it’s not just surrealism, but a tense relationship with unsatisfied purification, and nothing feels more Virgo to me than that.