Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield was organized by the Hammer Museum at UCLA in collaboration with the Burchfield Penney. The exhibition was on view at the Hammer in the fall of 2009.

Curator Robert Gober

Heat Waves in a Swamp is the first major Charles Burchfield exhibition to be mounted on the west coast and the first in New York for more than twenty years. Arranged chronologically, it approaches Burchfield’s work with a new perspective facilitated in part by the curatorial sensibilities of Robert Gober. Working with coordinating curator Cynthia Burlingham from UCLA’s Hammer Museum, Gober has augmented a large selection of watercolors with the inclusion of extensive biographical material that continually infuses Burchfield’s own thoughts about his work and artistic practice. An obsessive collector, organizer, and archivist, Burchfield left a treasure trove of well-maintained sketches, notebooks, journals, and doodles spanning his entire career. This material is now part of the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College, which houses more than twenty five thousand objects by this visionary American artist.

Robert Gober is a sculptor who has also curated exhibitions, the most recent being The Meat Wagon, in 2005 at The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. In 1999, Gober curated Anni Albers, Robert Beck, Cady Noland, Joan Semmel, and Nancy Shaver: Black and White Photographs 1975-77, at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. In 1988 he curated Utopia Post Utopia (Untitled Installation Conceived by Robert Gober), The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and organized Robert Gober, Nancy Shaver, Alan Turner, Meg Webster, Cable Gallery, New York, in 1986.

Gober was born in Wallingford, Connecticut in 1954, and currently lives and works in New York City. He studied at the Tyler School of Art, Rome, Italy, in 1973-1974 and received his B.A. in 1976 from Middlebury College, Vermont. He is best known for his sculptures, but also makes photographs, prints, and drawings.

Gober has exhibited widely both in the United States and abroad. In 2001 he was chosen to represent the United States in the 49th Venice Biennale. His has had numerous solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Dia Center for the Arts, New York. His work has also been included in five Whitney Biennials. In 2007 the Schaulager in Basel, Switzerland presented a thirty year retrospective, which was accompanied by a comprehensive book of his sculptures entitled Robert Gober: Sculptures and Installations 1979-2007.