Why is that man laughing?

Or more accurately, why are those men laughing?

It’s natural to ask whenever you walk by the 14 statues clustered around the little park at the corner of Davie and Denman, overlooking English Bay.

A-Maze-ing-Laughter is always striking – and more than a little unsettling.
The work by Beijing’s Yue Minjin features 14 giant statues, all likenesses of the artist, laughing his head off, showing off an alarming array of great big teeth. All the better to eat you with.

The only problem? It’s not clear what he’s laughing at.

Is he laughing with us? Or at us?

Is he laughing because life is joyful or because life is a joke? Or both?

Is he laughing because the suckers who run the art project called Vancouver Bienniale have elevated him to the status of high art, when it’s obvious to any practical person that he’s just a big joke?

Or is he laughing because the price tag to keep him here is $1.5 million, or that the artist has ‘reduced’ the price from $5 million?

That’s the whole point of A-Maze-ing Laughter. It’s a laughter maze. Once you enter, there’s no exit. You’ll never figure out why that man is laughing.

It’s mysterious, exhilarating and annoying, all-in-one.

That’s probably why the effort by Vancouver Bienniale to keep the work in Vancouver has been met with mixed reviews.

Some people think it’s art pollution.

Some people think the joke’s on them, and don’t appreciate it. Remember that other sculpture:

“Device to Root Out Evil”? It was a church turned upside down with its steeple pointing down to where the Devil lurks. Anyway, it offended so many people, we had to ship it off to Calgary, where they look on art as an investment.

Nervous chuckles aside, most people seem to get a big kick out of A-Maze-ing Laughter and clamber all over it like it’s a jungle gym for grownups, frolicking on a set of broad bronze shoulders, matching its oversized laughs. In fact, the artist has extended the deadline for Vancouver Bienniale to raise the $1.5 million to August, on the strength of all those playful interactions. A-Maze-ing Laughter is an amazing hit with people who may not know art but know what they like.

It would be a shame to lose such a buzz-maker and return the park to its unnatural state as a palm tree grove (if you think that’s natural, just ask the shivering palm trees).

But you never know when we might need that $1.5 million for something really important, like 1/400th of the roof on the stadium.

And you wonder why that man is laughing?