VANCOUVER, BC.- The Vancouver Biennale has a mandate to mount a major biannual outdoor art exhibition featuring world-class international sculptures, new media and performance art. In addition, the Vancouver Biennale produces publications, curriculum, professional symposiums and public lecture series.

The objective of the Vancouver Biennale is to celebrate art in public spaces, inviting the entire community to experience the brightest new and world renown talent in contemporary art. Through a diversity of artistic mediums, aesthetic sensibilities and cultural perspectives, an open dialogue about the art and the importance of art in public spaces begins.

Pursuing the theme in-transit-ion, the 2009-2011 exhibition expands and situate art along bike routes, at the Vancouver International Airport, at new Canada Line stations and wrapped on buses and rapid transit trains. In doing so, the exhibition emphasises the physical movement of people in our mobile society, as well as our changing attitudes and sensibilities towards public art.

A-maze-ing Laughter consists of multiple figures depicting the artist's own iconic laughing image, all with gaping grin and closed eyes in a state of hysterical laughter. The longer you look at the cast bronze figures, the more evident the contradiction between the animated laughter and the silent, frozen form of sculpture. It is cartoon like and playful, yet curious and intense.

"Thanks to our senior curator, Shengtian Zheng, we have the opportunity of a lifetime for Vancouver to have a famous vanguard post revolutionary artist in our midst with an installation of this significance", says Barrie Mowatt, President of the Vancouver Biennale. "This sculpture represents what the Vancouver Biennale is all about - bringing the best of international artists to our shores, with an emphasis on diversity, for everyone in our community to experience".