American artist and sculptor Paul Thek (1933–1988) began his career as a painter and graphic artist, yet achieved true renown in the 1960s through a series of lifelike wax sculptures depicting dismembered human body parts. His most famous piece, now-lost, dubbed “Death of a Hippie” by journalists, was a large pink ziggurat containing a hyperrealistic body cast of the artist attired in pink clothes and shoes. In 1970 Thek moved to Italy and his return to America in 1976 was met by the public with near zero enthusiasm; the artist spent his remaining days washing floors and bagging groceries. However, the writer and critic Susan Sontag dedicated her most famous collection of essays Against Interpretation to him, and his works of the 1960s and 1970s anticipated such contemporary art superstars as Mathew Barney and the Young British Artists.
American artist Robert Gober (b. 1954) is known for his grotesque and fantastical works, installations and objects representing a meld of minimalism and surrealism, which reimagine everyday forms in the spirit of the Freudian Unheimliche (uncanny). Like Thek, Gober works with wax, creating human body parts that jut out of the walls of the exhibition space, or installations and objects presenting disturbingly transformed mundane items – doors, sinks, wallpaper, etc. All of Gober’s works are created by hand in his studio, with every detail receiving meticulous and individual attention.
