Art in the Age of Truthiness. "Satirical newspapers are creating fake news stories in response to real events, which seem true on first read, while comedy television shows are recognized as legitimate and credible sources of the news...". The exhibition features 60 works by more than 25 recognized and emerging international artists, including: Ai Weiwei, Seung Woo Back, Zoe Beloff, Cao Fei, Thomas Demand, Mark Dion, Leandro Erlich, Omer Fast, John Gerrard, Johan Grimonprez and many more.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN/SANTA FE, NM, FEBRUARY 8, 2012
Searing documentary photographs of a war-ravaged country exposed as elaborately staged fakes. Irreplaceable Neolithic
urns, treated as ready-mades, dipped in cheerily bright, industrial paint that obscures their ancient markings. A coal
company’s Web site promising inhalers to asthma-inflicted children who live within 200 miles of a coal plant revealed as an
elaborate spoof. These and other works of art, which blur notions of reality and truth, are the subject of a new exhibition
organized by Elizabeth Armstrong, contemporary art curator and director of the Center for Alternative Museum Practice
(CAMP) at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA). Presented in collaboration with SITE Santa Fe, “More Real? Art in the Age
of Truthiness” takes Stephen Colbert’s coined term “truthiness”—fabricated truths, without regard to fact or logic—as its
starting point to explore the unstable relationship between fact and fiction in the 21st century.
Opening on July 8, 2012, at SITE Santa Fe, the exhibition will present 60 works by more than 25 recognized and emerging
international artists, including: Ai Weiwei, Seung Woo Back, Zoe Beloff, Cao Fei, Thomas Demand, Mark Dion, Leandro
Erlich, Omer Fast, John Gerrard, Johan Grimonprez, Iris Haussler, Jonn Herschend, Pierre Huyghe, Bertrand Lavier, Joel
Lederer, Sharon Lockhart, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Eva and Franco Mattes, Jonathan Monk, Vik Muniz, An-My Lê, Trevor
Paglen, Walid Raad, Dario Robleto, Eve Sussman, Mary Temple, and Yes Men.
Scheduled for July 6–8, 2012, the opening weekend in Santa Fe will include a gala preview and dinner, special artist
performances, a panel discussion, and a newly commissioned More Real? Guide to Fanta Se, complete with open-air guided
tours of The City Different. The exhibition will then travel to the MIA to open there on March 3, 2013.
“Satirical newspapers are creating fake news stories in
response to real events, which seem true on first read, while
comedy television shows are recognized as legitimate and
credible sources of the news,” said Armstrong. “Politicians
are inventing alternative histories and narratives, from faked
weapons of mass destruction to imaginary Bosnian sniper
fire. “More Real?” brings together the work of artists from
across the globe who are responding to the pervasiveness
of truthiness in politics and culture, writ-large to understand
better our perceptions of truth, reality, and the genuine.”
Broken into three thematic sections—Deception and Play:
From Trompe l’oeil to the Authentic Fake; The Status of
Fact: Unreliable Narrators, Parafiction, and Truthiness; and
Reshaping the Real: Cinema, Memory, and the Virtual—the
exhibition will present work across a variety of traditional
and experimental mediums, including painting, sculpture,
photography, video, sound, and online installations. Highlights
of the works on view include:
• An-My Lê’s Small Wars, 1999–2002, battle-scene re-
enactments of the Vietnam War photographed in the
United States, but appear to be documentary
photographs;
• Ai Weiwei’s Colored Vases, 2006, Neolithic and Han
dynasty urns, which may or may not be authentic,
subjected to smashing, grinding, and dipping into
vats of industrial paint that obliterate their historic
and aesthetic importance;
• Joel Lederer’s The Metaverse is Beautiful, 2008,
large-scale images of utopian landscapes in the
virtual world Second Life;
• Vik Muniz’s Verso, 2008, a series of meticulously rendered objects that simulate the reverse sides of iconic
paintings with their loan stickers, gallery labels, historic inscriptions, and scratches and marks from the
ravages of time;
• Eve Sussman’s 89 Seconds at Alcazar, 2004, a video installation that recreates the scene from Diego
Velázquez’s 17th-century masterpiece Las Meninas as a highly realistic moving image.
Each of these highlighted works put pressure on contemporary notions of authenticity, veracity, historicism, and
originality. In doing so, they create a sense of discomfort that asks viewers to examine more deeply the often-felt
impulse to accept presented facts and images at face value.
A 300-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition and will include essays by Armstrong and by contributors D. Graham
Burnett, of Princeton University; Mark Levy, California State University; Tom Gunning, University of Chicago; Carrie
Lambert-Beatty, Harvard University; Norman Klein, California Institute of the Arts; and Glenn Lowry, Museum of Modern
Art. The fully-illustrated book will also include an entry about each of the artists featured in the exhibition.
“More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness” is presented by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and SITE Santa Fe.
The exhibition is made possible by a generous grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional
support is provided by Étant donnés, the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art.
ABOUT THE MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), home to one of the finest encyclopedic art collections in the country, houses more
than 80,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history. Highlights of the permanent collection include European
masterworks by Rembrandt, Poussin, and van Gogh; modern and contemporary painting and sculpture by Picasso, Matisse,
Mondrian, Stella, and Close; as well as internationally significant collections of prints and drawings, decorative arts, Modernist
design, photographs, textiles, and Asian, African, and Native American art. General admission is always free.
Some special exhibitions have a nominal admission fee. Museum hours: Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday,
and Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; Monday closed. For more information, call (612) 870-3000 or visit
www.artsmia.org.
ABOUT SITE SANTA FE
SITE Santa Fe is a dynamic platform for the production and presentation of artistic and curatorial innovation. Located in the
Historic Railyard at 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, N.M., SITE serves as a nexus for contemporary art discourse through
excellence in its exhibitions and programs. Call (505) 989-1199 or visit www.sitesantafe.org for more information.
Image: Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG, Catt (Fake Cattelan sculpture), 2010, taxidermy cat and bird, polyurethane resin, cage, wood, Private collection, Houston, courtesy Inman Gallery, Houston. Photograph by Rinaldo Capra.
PRESS CONTACTS
MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS
Anne-Marie Wagener, (612) 870-3280, awagener@artsmia.org
Tammy Pleshek, (612) 870-3171, tpleshek@artsmia.org
SITE SANTA FE
Anne Wrinkle, (505) 989-1199 x 22, wrinkle@sitesantefe.org
RESNICOW SCHROEDER ASSOCIATES
Alison Buchbinder, (212) 671-5165, abuchbinder@resnicowschroeder.com
Aga Sablinska, (212) 671-5177, asablinska@resnicowschroeder.com
SITE Santa Fe
1606 Paseo de Peralta - Santa Fe, NM 87501
Hours:
Thursday - Saturday: 10 am - 5 pm
Friday: 10 am - 7 pm
Sunday: 12 - 5 pm
Monday - Wednesday: closed
SITE is open on Wednesdays June 22- August 31
Admission Fees:
General Admission: $10
Students and Seniors: $5
SITE Santa Fe Members: Free
Fridays: Free
18 and under Free
Free admission for the public on Fridays is made possible by The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston.
Admission is free on Saturday mornings, from 10 am - 12 pm, during the Santa Fe Farmers Market.