The Hanging Man/Sleeping Man
The Hanging Man/Sleeping Man wallpaper appeared in several of the artist Rober Gober’s installations. The iconography is intriguing: a lynched black man is hanging from a tree, while a sleeping white man contrasts with the decorative nature of the wallpaper. This scene evokes the history of racial inequality in the United States at a time when American society was shaken by many upheavals: the AIDS epidemic, the culture wars and the Los Angeles race riots.
“By putting this image on a wallpaper that keeps repeating itself, I tried to say, metaphorically, that this was not an isolated event and that, in a way, it has become our background.” Robert Gober
Discover this work from the collection during your visit to Frac Bretagne, Rennes.
The artist
Robert Gober
Born in 1954 in Wallingford (USA)
Lives and works in New York
Since the early 1980s, Robert Gober has explored sexuality, religion and politics in a subversive and enigmatic way.
In addition to these interests, the human body and the object play an important role in his work. As a sculptor, he creates domestic or familiar objects – shoes, sinks, wallpaper – and fragments of the body, which he stages in installations combining sculpture, photography and drawing.
Image : Robert Gober, Hanging Man/Sleeping Man, 1989. Frac Bretagne Collection © Robert Gober. Photo : Richard Dumas