NARRATOR:

Sculptor Robert Gober has transformed this gallery into a prison cell. The blue sky taunts us with the promise of escape—but escape to where? When this work was first installed, it was surrounded by a landscape painted on the walls of the gallery and accompanied by the sound of a babbling brook.

JONATHAN KATZ:

And you have a very fixed sense of what this place is about, an attempt to create a kind of paradise.

NARRATOR:

Art historian Jonathan Katz. The brook, it turned out, was simply a faucet running into a utility sink and . . .

KATZ:

The longer you stay, the more you realize there’s something wrong in paradise. The beautiful light that pours through comes through a barred window. And this forest turns out to be the scene painter’s forest. And I think that what he ultimately wants to do here is to seed resistance. Not to speak resistance, not to be the one who says, “Things aren’t right”; but rather, to get you to realize things aren’t right.

NARRATOR:

Curator John Weber.

JOHN WEBER:

He’s saying, “I’m giving you an image, and I’m going to remind you it’s an image. It’s artificial. It’s not real. So, um, don’t be fooled by me.”