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.

The Process

Christian Scheidemann (of Contemporary Conservation) began by freeze drying thick slices of very large russet potatoes, to remove the moisture from the potato without shrinking the form. The first batch of potatoes was sent to Freeze-Dry Foods Inc. in Albion, NY. These potato slices came back black and shrunken. After several attempts a suitable batch of freeze-dried potato slices was made. These slices were then soaked by Scheidemann in different dilutions of Paraloid B72, an acrylic (ethyl-methacrylate) that is thinned with acetone. These first samples were then sent to Leslie Miller (of the Grenfell Press) who would be printing the edition. Miller sent them out to an engraver to laser etch the text into the potato slices. This proved impossible as it is a heat producing process and the laser was “cooking and disintegrating” the potatoes.

Jon Conner (of Conner Studio) was then consulted on the possibility of engraving the text into the potatoes with a CNC (computer numeric controlled) router. Miller had a few pieces that had not gone to the laser engravers and these were given to Conner to do some milling tests. These tests revealed that the epoxy was not getting deep enough into the potato for it to be engraved in this way. Once the surface was planed to make it flat, there were too many voids and soft spots, and the potato slices just would not hold up to the engraving process.

Another round of potato slices was sent off to Freeze-Dry Foods Inc. Scheidemann soaked these new slices in a solution of Hxtal, which is a clear epoxy used in joining glass pieces. The thinking was that since the Hxtal is very viscous, having a consistency somewhere between mineral oil and water that it would be able to fully saturate the potatoes.

In late April of 2011, Scheidemann and Conner took these newest samples to Conner Studio in Brooklyn to see if they would stand up to the milling process and to plane the surface of the potato slices perfectly flat for printing. The Hxtal was still not penetrating through the potato and filling all the voids, so Scheidemann took these planed potatoes back to his studio to see if he could get them fully immersed and fully saturated in the Hxtal. Conner then milled the text into these four separate potato slices using his CNC machine, which takes a three-dimensional path from the computer and carves it into a material via a router and a robotic control arm that can move on an x, y, and z axis.

Once the text was milled into the potatoes/printing plates, they were sent to Miller to be printed. The printing went through several layout variations, always adhering to the approved unaltered text and the inclusion of the copyright information.

The problem of finding a slightly aged looking archival paper for printing was solved when Gober did a test by leaving a white sheet of Borden and Riley Bond on the roof in August in intense sun for two days. This successfully aged and yellowed the paper but, by the time the entire stack of paper that was to be printed was at the studio, the intense summer sun was gone and fall was beginning. Thus, rather than two days of intense sun, the paper was aged on the roof in the sun for twelve to fifteen days. Andrew Rogers and Becky Kinder would take the sheets up to the roof first thing in the morning on non-rainy days, hang them on the clothesline and bring the paper back down at the end of the day. This changed the tone and color of the paper as well as giving it the characteristic dents, dings, and creases that each print has.

The frame is a handmade artist frame, made at the Gober studio by Bill Abbott, painted in Benjamin Moore Dulamel, and hinged onto a background paper of Stonehenge pale blue 250g which was mounted to a piece of four-ply cotton rag museum board.