Ordinary Madness mines Carnegie Museum of Art’s rich holdings of contemporary art to suggest an unsettling observation: that the ordinary is in fact laced with the contradictory, uncanny, and surreal. The wide array of works on view engage the everyday from various skewed (or perhaps clear-eyed) vantage points, illuminating the bewildering experiences we subconsciously accept as part of our daily lives. Although the selection and comparison of works can be seen in some instances as a playful revision of standard art historical narratives, the exhibition’s purpose is to create a conversation interweaving art and life from varied perspectives: social, psychological, and bodily conditions; the act of making in response to these conditions; and the amalgam of images, materials, and objects that populate our world.