Untitled (2002-04), installed at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York, loosely follows a floor plan of a church with a Surrealist mix of political, Catholic, and personal iconographies that respond to the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The focal point is a human wall fountain, a crucified and headless Christ from whose nipples water spews and drains into a hole in the concrete floor.

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The Meat Wagon (2005), which Gober presented at the Menil Collection in Houston, was a critical examination of the museum as an exhibition space, intermixing works from the institution's permanent collection with Gober's objects, both earlier and new. In this work, Gober broke new ground in his continuing self-examination of personal identity. This installation is Gober's assessment of the artist's relationship to museum curators, and the relationship of works of art to the culturally determined context of the art museum.

Gober's art is deeply poetic, drawing its strength from the artist's multifaceted reflections on who he is. Hence, his art is a kind of cumulative, non-representational self-portrait. His compelling sculptures and installations are coded for emotional and cultural binaries: childhood experience / adult recollection, life / death, loss / redemption.

Gober sets his personal vocabulary of forms in play with our own memories and public symbols to create universal statements that address the fragility of being human and the hope of transcendence.

An intensely private man, Gober, who continues to reside in New York City, protects the details of his personal life. At the same time, however, he has from early in his career been open about his homosexuality and its deep relevance for his work. In February 2003, he appeared at Yale University in one of the first events sponsored by the Larry Kramer Initiative for Gay and Lesbian Studies, "A Conversation with Robert Grober," thus explicitly acknowledging the connection between his sexuality and his art.

In response to the AIDS epidemic, a number of activist groups, including Gran Fury and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, have used art as a means to raise awareness about the epidemic.

After Stonewall, American gay male art underwent a radical transformation as artists came out and began to treat gay themes openly and directly.

Contemporary Art, which designates new currents in art since 1970, is identified with postmodernism; during this period an art addressing gay and lesbian identity emerged.

An artistic movement that grew out of Dadaism and flourished in Europe shortly after World War I, Surrealism embraced the idea that art was an expression of the subconscious.

The confrontations between police and demonstrators at the Stonewall Inn in New York City the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 mark the beginning of the modern glbtq movement for equal rights.