Robert Gober is a sculptor and installation artist who recreates and subverts ordinary domestic objects to explore social constructions of family, identity, sexuality and race. Wallpapers are often an integral part of his installations becuase they act as an effective shorthand, transforming a gallery or public space into a space with domestic connotations.

This wallpaper has pattern of sketchy drawings of naked male and female torsos; the drawing style is reminiscent of childish graffiti. By putting these motifs on a wallpaper Gober breaks with the taboo of privacy and secrecy which surrounds sex and sexuality in the home and family, and brings private matters into the public domain. At the same time, he suggests our irrepressible curiosity about sex, which is pictured all around us in advertising, on television, in newspapers and magazines. Gober also intended this wallpaper to serve as an oblique commentary on the AIDS epidemic, which was at it height in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when this paper was first made and exhibited. By making a display of what is usually hidden and private, he shows how one consequence of the AIDS crisis was that sexual practices became the subject of unprecedented public admission, debate and education. In some versions of the installation the papered walls were pierced at intevals with stainless steel sink drains, in an obvious further reference to fluids and waste matter, and to contamination and cleanliness.

The wallpaper was originally commercially produced and on general sale through the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, but was withdrawn by the artist in 1993. Two rolls of paper are necessary to show the full repeat becuase the pattern spreads across their combined width.