'Its Surreal Thing: The Temptation of Objects' opens Friday at Sheldon

            Surrealism loves a duality -- especially one that wields a contradiction -- day and night, waking and dreaming, the rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious.

            "Its Surreal Thing: The Temptation of Objects," an unprecedented exhibition of surrealist sculpture, opens Oct. 4 at the Sheldon Museum of Art, 12th and R streets on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln City Campus.

            The public is invited to wear fashion inspired by surrealism to the museum's First Friday reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Oct. 4. The event is free and will include performances by members of the UNL dance program.

            Jorge Daniel Veneciano, director of the Sheldon Museum of Art and curator of the exhibition, encourages museum visitors to free their minds to the allure of objects.

            "The idea here is that there is always more to life than what we see outright," he said. "A view to the obscured resides not solely in the things themselves, but in the attraction they exert on us. Held in this tension, things will divulge more than we're accustomed to seeing."

            The exhibition is not simply about surrealist objects, but is itself an attempt at surrealism, Veneciano said. Objects are grouped and juxtaposed in ways that provoke the viewer's sensibilities to reactions unattainable when viewing discrete objects. The exhibition occupies the museum's Great Hall and temporary exhibition galleries, which are divided into themed spaces: "The White Gallery," "The Night Gallery" and "The Light Gallery."

            "Its Surreal Thing" runs through Jan. 5 and includes works by Eva Aeppli, Arman, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Nicola Costantino, Marcel Duchamp, David Hare, Joseph Havel, Barbara Hepworth, David Ireland, Donald Lipski, Harvey Littleton, Man Ray, Ron Mueck, Elie Nadelman, Dennis Oppenheim, Tom Otterness, Ken Price, Martin Puryear, Marc Quinn, Tom Rippon, Hugo Robus, Jeanie Silverthorne, Kiki Smith, George Segal, Ossip Zadkine and William Zorach, among many others.

            Sheldon Museum of Art houses a permanent collection of more than 12,000 objects focusing on transnational American art. Sheldon is open free to the public during regular hours: Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. The museum is closed on Monday. For more information, visit http://www.sheldonartmuseum.org.