Tearjerker (2026) is a 30 × 30 × 20 cm Chihuahua sculpted in Carrara marble, holding a stick of dynamite in its mouth. It is cute and indifferent to its situation. The title indicates how we are meant to feel.
We stumble upon the little dog immortalised in the final moments of its own existence, supposedly unaware of its fate and ready for the viewer to take the stick and play fetch. But the dynamite fuse has almost run its course, its final flame protruding from the end of the stick. The little dog will be blown to pieces and effectively cease to exist. An attempt by the viewer to pet or encourage the dog (because it is such a good boy) will result in the loss of limbs or disfigurement. But perhaps it was the viewer who threw the stick in the first place and is now left to live with the consequences of their own distraction and appetite, as if symbolic of our collective failure.
Holding its bomb with solemnity, the tiny dog has little idea what it is supposed to represent. Young takes one of sculpture’s most venerable materials and gives it a subject somewhere between a caricature, a threat and a really bad idea. Carrara marble casts a historically heavy shadow and disproportionately lends the Chihuahua a permanence that the dynamite threatens to compromise, resulting in a sculpture rehearsing its own destruction while flaunting its material immortality.