More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness Exhibition Explores Fiction and Reality in Contemporary Art

The exhibition More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness, on view at SITE Santa Fe and traveling to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, examines how art engages with truthiness—a concept popularized by Stephen Colbert and defined by the American Dialect Society as preferring desired truths over known facts. Spanning the George W. Bush era, the show features works that present fictions as truths, blending reality and fabrication to challenge viewer discernment. The Yes Men's hoaxes, such as their fake 2004 announcement about Dow Chemical compensating Bhopal disaster victims, which caused a $2 billion stock drop, and their 2009 New York Post Special Edition on climate change, demonstrate art's impact on real-world issues. Trevor Paglen's long-exposure photographs, like Nine Reconnaissance Satellites over the Sonora Pass (2008), merge cosmic beauty with technological surveillance, while Walid Raad's I Only Wish That I Could Weep (2001–02) uses purported surveillance footage of a Beirut sunset during the Lebanese Civil War to aestheticize conflict. Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation's video 89 Seconds at Alcázar (2004) reenacts Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656), questioning the reality of representation. Painting is notably absent, but the exhibition highlights how art historically probes perception. The article was published in the January & February 2013 issue of ArtReview.