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.
Ordinary Madness
Heinz Galleries
Oct. 15, 2010–Jan. 9, 2011

Exhibition Images






Support
Major support for Ordinary Madness is provided by The Fellows of Carnegie Museum of Art, The Henry L. Hillman Fund, and the Virginia Kaufman Fund, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, and The Associates of Carnegie Museum of Art. General operating support for Carnegie Museum of Art is provided by The Heinz Endowments and Allegheny Regional Asset District. Carnegie Museum of Art receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.