**Fairy**, by Tony Oursler. Aqua resin, cast acrylic, acrylic paint, bronze, plexiglass, fake hair, steel, inkjet print on canvas, digital moving image with sound, sculpture (2023). Performance by Katiana Rangel.

Written by Makenna Karas

There is a certain disorientation that one experiences when looking at the world these days. Between the pandemic, increasingly divisive political extremism, climate change, and world events flying into our inboxes all day, it is increasingly difficult to tell what is real, and what is illusory. We are left squinting at headlines in an exhausting haze of confusion. What is this and what does it mean?

**Dow Does the Right Thing**, by The Yes Men. Multimedia installation (2004). Photo by Nicholas Knight.

It is that dizzy state of mind that the Tieger Award-winning exhibition, “Smoke and Mirrors: Magical Thinking in Contemporary Art” evokes with refined grace. Exclusively aimed at targeting the deceit, disinformation, and outlandish theories of our modern, media-based landscape, the exhibit explores how these illusions have manifested all throughout time, from the 1800s until now. Located at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the exhibit will be open to the public through May 12, 2024.

**Imponderable Still 5**, by Tony Oursler. Film still, 5-D feature length film, 90 minutes (2015).

Tony Oursler contributes his work to the exhibit with pieces such as “Imponderable”, a still shot from his film that utilizes Pepper’s Ghost, a theatrical technique from the 1800s that relies on a mirror to project optical illusions of ghosts onto a stage. It is this technique that is responsible for the eerie nature of the image, where you feel that you are witnessing something that your mind cannot quite make sense of. The sweetness of the little girls is placed in juxtaposition with the dark wisdom that the forest emanates, haunting you as you watch one corrupt the other. All girlish innocence is lost to the ethereal realm of spirits, a paranormal realm that Oursler is especially interested in portraying. In that Gothic fashion, the eye is taunted and teased, yanked from belief to disbelief as it tries to craft a narrative for a scene that defies all logic, channeling contemporary feelings about the world.

**Trial by Fire**, by Sarah Charlesworth. Cibachrome with lacquered wood frame (1992-93). Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery. ©The Estate of Sarah Charlesworth.

Similarly, Sarah Charlesworth’s “Trial by Fire” evokes those feelings by interacting with ideas of danger and destruction at the hands of humans. The image presents two gloved hands that are suspended in a blackened abyss–a spooky space of anonymity that can be likened to the internet–holding raging tongues of fire. The handheld fire, much like the little girls in the forest of Oursler’s work, defies logic. It pushes the mind into a space where it is forced to grapple with an impossibility, contorting all convention. The fire is held with purpose, suggesting an element of danger that is reminiscent of the destruction that human hands are capable of catalyzing through the spread of misinformation and fakery, connecting to the theme of deceit that links the entire collection.

**The Exhibition**, by Stephen Berkman, Zohar Studios. Albumen print.

Absurd scenarios continue to appear throughout the series, pulling the viewer deeper into a world that they cannot understand. A child dressed as an alien or a pair of conjoined twins add to the intentional disorientation of the collection that renders it so remarkably different. As you look through the images, you are being both manipulated and challenged, inspired and haunted. In producing that experience, the exhibit channels the very essence of art that lures us all in, again and again, asking that we examine the world with that same careful eye.