All Photos By Gail

As with so many of Robert Gober’s classic works of the 1990s, the artist approached Short Haired Cheese (1992 – 93)  by researching the archetypal forms of his chosen subject, landing here on an unmistakable, yellow-tinged wedge of Swiss cheese, complete with air bubble holes.

The Cheese Stands Alone . . .

The hair that appears to grow out of the rind  (clippings from one of his studio assistants) adds a haunting, anthropomorphic cast. Throughout this artist’s work, impeccably rendered objects  associated with a nostalgic, mid-twentieth century domesticity — comestibles such as butter, gin or donuts, or home-maintenance products like house paint, light bulbs, or rat poison — are made strange, even unsettlingly queasy, through the artist’s distinctive interventions and allusions to a body in pieces.

Photographed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.