Robert Gober’s Heart in a Box is the sentimental/dark/mildly emo version of The Lonely Islands’ Dick in a Box.

As the directions explain in Dick in a Box, all you have to do it 1. Cut a hole in a box 2. Put your junk in that box 3. Make her open the box. But with Heart in a Box, it’s a little more complicated because you have to cut out your heart. It’s like the perfect combination of Dick in a Box and Van Gogh’s ear-chopping-off debacle.

Just to put your nerves at ease, we’ll tell you that this is not, in fact, a real heart. No one died in the process of making this art work and it was not some sort of donor situation, although that would be really badass. It’s made out of corrugated aluminum, cast glass, paper, plaster, and ink. The heart alone is cast in glass which demonstrates Gober’s monster medium talents. I mean who can sculpt in glass these day? So his material list on each piece’s little plaque thing has become a point of pride for Gober. He thinks of his material lists as a sort of subtitle because they give you an insight into the work that you didn’t get with Gober’s usual and oh-so-helpful title, Untitled. And even when he does have a title it’s something basic like Heart in a Box. But knowing that the heart in Heart in a Box is made out of glass makes the whole work revolve around fragility, which may or may not be a metaphor for the vibes in New York City during the AIDS epidemic, where Gober was living at the time. In short, a Gober exhibit may be the only place where being a paranoid, over-thinker works in your favor.