“Roots, branches, and leaves are common, usually romantic, metaphors in song and poetry. In Gober’s sculptures the enduring tree is a key player in a tragic universe.”
—Brenda Richardson

“When I first saw the wallpaper, it seemed to go on and on, which meant that the vulnerability of that sleeping man and the vulnerability of that murdered body went on and on, too. There was no getting any distance from it. Sometimes, when I look at a work of art, the hard thing that an artist is saying about place or history, or their combined effects on the body and on the psyche, becomes glossed over, worked out in such a way that I can ‘take it.’ I couldn’t take Gober’s work, not at first. The coolness of his palette, the clinical nature of his creations, only made it harder to recover from. The beauty of his line confused me; did it express a distance from or a triumph over the chaos of the times?”
—Hilton Als