Untitled (Rifle Rest): part Art Object, part trophy. The sculpture is hand-sewn from remnants of a buck-deer skin and filled with sand. Its bag sits atop a steel adjustable tripod, which in turn is contained within a tabletop vitrine. As used by shooters, one's rifle rest "does not inhibit recoil or allow clinging that could mar a gun's finish". This surreal object distills some of the more unsettling aspects of Beck's work, as the psychosexual relationship of predator to prey is dramatized. As the artist notes, "After all, we only hurt the things we love".

Robert Beck has exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, the Centro Cultural Sao Paolo, Brazil, The Whitney Museum, NY, the Queens Museum, NY, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY, the Palm Beach Institute for Contemporary Art, FL, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, the Matisse Museum, Nice, France, the Weatherspoon Gallery, Greensboro, NC, the Thread Waxing Space, NY, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, P.S. 1 Museum, NY, and the Kunstverien, Hamburg, Germany. He has had several solo exhibitions, and is included in the collections of the Dallas Museum, TX, the J. Paul Getty Museum, CA, the Long Beach Museum of Art, CA, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY among others. Robert Beck is represented by CRG Gallery, NY.

Other artworks by Robert Beck

The Ballad of Earl King, 2001

Once Across the Mason Dixon, 2001