You’ve probably heard the idiom, “the elephant in the room,” to describe when there’s some uncomfortable and obvious problem that no one is addressing—the kind of issue that feels as though it’s taking up all available space. But what if yet another megafauna came stampeding onto the scene? That’s where Berlin-based artist Itamar Gov’s large-scale installation comes in.
The Rhinoceros in the Room is a towering, inflatable sculpture that fills a medieval church nave at Kunstmuseum Magdeburg in Germany. Gov draws inspiration from Renaissance engraver Albrecht Dürer’s iconic rhinoceros woodcut, which the artist created in 1515 without having ever seen one of the animals himself. His rendering is wildly inaccurate in terms of anatomy, depicting an extra horn at the creature’s shoulders and armor instead of a thick leather hide, but thanks to the ability to replicate it in print, it captured the public’s imagination.
Dürer’s image persists as a symbol of imperial might and prestige. The animal itself represents power and vigor, and one was even gifted from Sultan Muzafar II of Gujaratm, India, to King Manuel I of Portugal in 1515, providing the inspiration for the artist’s rendering.
The rhinoceros has also been hunted and poached nearly to extinction, and several species remain critically endangered today. For The Rhinoceros in the Room, Gov “combines historical events, philosophical ideas, and local legends and questions the fragile boundaries between fact and fiction; memory and imagination,” the museum says.
Portrayed in monochrome gray, the gentle giant lumbers amid the 11th-century Romanesque colonnades, assuming a spectral guise. On one hand, it’s somewhat absurd in its sheer size and sense of being out-of-place, yet on the other, the creature invokes curiosity and wonder and stands sentry as an icon of brawn and resilience.
The Rhinoceros in the Room remains on view through July 5. Find more on Gov’s Instagram.
