Heavy Dog Kiss

Heavy Dog Kiss is an example of Oppenheim’s installation and public sculpture. Emerging from his interest in viewers’ embodied responses to art, he began experimenting in the 1990s with cantilevered forms and distortions of scale. While some of the works appear menacing or precarious, this one depicts a tender kiss between human and a dog. The artist made several iterations of this sculpture, filling the human head with inanimate items, ranging from concrete and scrap metal to the more playful bowling balls and buoys shown here.