Who

A major American artist since the mid-'80s, Gober is best known for his surrealist sculptures of sinks and disembodied legs jutting out of walls.

Backstory

Connecticut native and Middlebury grad Gober moved to Manhattan in the mid-'70s to become a painter; His first solo show in 1984 at the Paula Cooper Gallery consisted of slides of a painting in various states of completion. Gober soon turned his attention to sculpture, making a splash with a series of pieces based on sinks. Other notable works followed, including a playpen in the shape of an "X"—called, of course, X Playpen—and a series of wax body parts positioned as if the bodies they belonged to were trapped in a wall. While his sculptures are usually made of quotidian objects, they're nonetheless frequently creepy and occasionally controversial. For a 1997 show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Gober depicted the Virgin Mary standing above a sewer drain with sewage passing through her torso; outrage predictably ensued.

After 11 years without a gallery show—a period during he was not totally inactive, as he represented the United States at the 2001 Venice Biennale—in 2005 Gober reemerged and displayed new work, including a series of drawings of people having sex on newspapers from September 12th, 2001. In November of the same year, he broke his previous sales records when his Untitled Leg was sold at Sotheby's for $912,000; these days his pieces can fetch north of $3.5 million at auction. Gober is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery.

Personal

Gober's longtime partner is artist Donald Moffet, whose own work can be seen at the Marianne Boesky Gallery. The couple lives in a co-op on 10th Street; one of their neighbors in the building is Chloë Sevigny.