Artist: Exhibits Were Fake, but Not a 'Hoax'

By KATE TAYLOR, Staff Reporter of the Sun | June 6, 2008

Being interrogated by the Secret Service was a real-world coda to Yazmany Arboleda's mostly fabricated art project.

On Wednesday, Mr. Arboleda was questioned by the Secret Service and New York City police intelligence officers, after putting a sign in a Midtown storefront that read "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama." He was released without charges.

As it turns out, Mr. Arboleda was more than prepared for the press attention that followed his run-in with the law. He had already created a fake Internet history for his Clinton and Obama exhibitions, suggesting that they had earlier been shut down because of political controversy.

Web sites for "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton" and "The Assassination of Barack Obama" say that the exhibitions were shown at the Leah Keller Gallery, at 576 W. 24th St., and at the Naomi Gates Gallery, at 594 W. 22nd St. As The New York Sun predicted yesterday, those galleries do not exist; there is nothing at either address.

Mr. Arboleda constructed a story, which was picked up by the Miami Herald, the Daily News, and others, about how these galleries abruptly closed the shows in March after coming under political pressure. (Marty Peretz of the New Republic had previously blogged critically about the Obama "exhibit," of which he had only seen Mr. Arboleda's Photoshop images on the Internet. Asked by the Sun how he found the exhibition's Web site, Mr. Peretz said he didn't remember.)

The installation in the Midtown space, on West 40th Street, is real. It includes images of both candidates with text highlighting the qualities they have been mocked for, such as Senator Clinton's lack of sex appeal.

In an interview with the Sun, Mr. Arboleda said the story about the suppressed exhibitions was "not at all a hoax. This was planned, this was prepared, this was thought out. It was calculated every step of the way." He added: "To call it a hoax, it diminishes the power and the thinking behind my work."

In response to a question about the fake galleries, he said: "You will find out those places are absolutely real in due time. What is a gallery? What is space? Those are questions I am going to explore."