Heartbreak Hotel

It’s hard to tell whether Dennis Oppenheim meant his sculptures at Grand Arts, which are on display for only a few more days, to be despairing or hilarious. The two pieces — “Malaria Hotel Lounge” and “Marriage Tree” — seem goofy as hell at first glance, like something a sophomoric stoner would create if he had the cash. But under prolonged scrutiny they grow darker, unsettling, almost melancholy.

In the front gallery, strands of red rope-lights spell out “Malaria Hotel Lounge” in loose cursive along the wall, like a sign for some martini dive. Playing underneath the rosy glow is a sort of makeshift mechanical band: five metal wheels spinning slowly atop tripods, four of them hosting electric guitars, another covered with small synthesizers. As the guitars turn round and round, they’re strummed by mounted picks and steel brushes to eke out a warbly, never-ending song. Gathered around this crude robot quintet is an audience of a half dozen pup tents with little folding stools tucked inside them. One holds a bug zapper. A few others are alive with artificial firefly lights.

In the back gallery, “Marriage Tree” looms. It looks sort of like a tree, with a thick trunk bifurcating upward, but it’s made of giant fiberglass replicas of those little husband and wife figurines people put on their wedding cakes.

Both sculptures are funny because they’re so utterly anomalous, like non sequiturs blurted out at a stuffy party. But their strange configurations yield haunting details. The hands of the would-be lovers never touch, their eyes never gaze into each other’s. Their bodies are precariously balanced, so stony and stiff (with fear, it seems), they appear ready to topple at any moment. Meanwhile, the Malaria Hotel Lounge is completely void of humanity, the last place one would go for spirits and camaraderie. The pup tents are too sterile and closed off to sidle into like a bar booth. And you sure can’t dance to the desolate twang of those out-of-tune electric guitars.