Day Nine of Vacation 2011: Surrealism

August 8

   This place reminds me of somewhere people go to be insane.  I'm in a Vancouver art museum, and the theme is surrealism.  I learned something about myself today: I hate surrealism.  Or at least dislike it.  It's... disturbing.  The 3-D art and photos and video scare me more than the paintings.  I can appreciate paintings, I can appreciate the unreal.  It's when the unreal steps out of the painting that I feel its fingers on my arm, its breath on the back of my neck.  Some artists would call that a successful piece of art, one that haunts the viewer.  I call it creepy.
   Wandering through this building, I feel like I'm in a surrealist painting myself.  It's a classy old building with ornate architecture, marble staircases and a vaulted glass dome.  However, there are also escalators, which contrast oddly with the building.  Then there's the exhibits themselves.  Riding on the escalators is like being shuffled through a different world.  There're plastic sculptures with no heads, a giant painting of a man behind bars, and a whole room full of lights that move oddly, glowing and receding to create the illusion of movement.  Then, through it all, is the hum of the air conditioner, the irregular squeak of the escalator, and the occasional far-off, indistinguishable babble of human voices.  I feel like I'm in the Department of Mysteries.
   Right now I'm in a room full of mirrors.  Wedged into the mirrors are photos, new and old -- I think this exhibit is about memory, how individuals are full of these random snapshots of life that come to reflect who one is.