Richard Flood: What was the candle about?
Robert Gober: I think it was a very neat, wrapped-up symbol of mortality and sexuality. Because you’ve got a candle that is basically the size of a man’s erection, kind of the same color. It’s clearly a candle, but around its base is hair, which gives you the erection pretty clearly. Yet the tip of it is still unburned, which gives you the possibility of igniting. You have the clichéd metaphor of life as a candle, etc.
RF: And the wick is…
RG: The wick is actually my venetian blind cord; it was the right scale, so I cut if off and used it.
(R. Gober and R. Flood, “Interview,” Robert Gober: Sculpture + Drawing, Minneapolis, 1999, pp. 133-134)
A poignant monument to the AIDS crisis and a metaphor for human loss, Robert Gober’s Untitled Candle has both religious and sexual connotations.  Perhaps no object is as imbued with meaning and symbolism as a candle—a lit candle signifying life, peace or faith while an extinguished or unlit one symbolizes death. Historically symbols of commemoration, the lighting of a candle suggests hope or remembrance. One cannot help but think of the beauty of a candlelight vigil. However, by leaving the wick untouched and interspersing the base of the candle with delicate hairs, Gober is sexualizing and transforming his work into something altogether more profound. 
Gober’s career was established during the late 1980s and early 1990s at the very height of the AIDS crisis and this is an indelible element in his art.  This work completed just around that time is one of his most solitary and profound works, its own memento mori or vanitas painting. With this work Gober is affirming his community in a time of crisis and creating a beautifully emblematic work that carries multiple layers of meaning.
There is an overwhelming feeling of desire throughout Gober’s work, one that is always tempered by an undercurrent of loss. The impermanence of a lit candle hints at the fleeting nature of life. However by leaving his candle unlit and the wick untouched, Gober is creating a poignant and permanent memorial. 
Both graphic and subtle at the same time, Gober creates very unmonumental monuments out of very ordinary objects, each one laboriously handmade and richly laden with meaning for those who choose to seek it. His work comments on violence, disparity and exclusion. Perhaps best known for his disembodied body parts, sometimes nude, sometimes clothed and often inscribed with musical notes, Gober’s art has a profound and unsettling impact on the viewer. His work sheds light in dark corners, opening our eyes to issues within our society that many would sometimes prefer to ignore.  Reminiscent of Bruce Nauman’s wax faces or arms, these works directly reference amputation, both literally and emotionally. The irrefutable phallic shape of the present work certainly hints at a form of both physical, but more importantly, social castration. He hints at a sense of social exclusion felt by so many, particularly the gay community in the early 1990s and more generally to the prejudice that exists within our society. In some cases this feeling of loss or amputation is more distinct such as with his legs or torsos emerging from walls and in some it is more subtle such as with his Untitled Candle.
There is an element of solitude to his works – a severing from the body and by turn from society. Easily one of Gober’s best known and most profound works, Untitled Candle is a striking votive that offers the poignant memory of loss coupled with the unique hope of remembrance.