After attending a research forum on behavioral economics,
dishonesty and cheating, 20 local artists were invited to create innovative and
engaging artwork in response to what they had learned. Their artwork will be on
display at 2024 W. Main St., Bay C, from Dec. 3 to Jan. 31 with an
opening reception from 6-10 p.m. Friday, Dec. 16.
The forum and exhibit was organized by the Center for
Advanced Hindsight at Duke University, which is led by Dan Ariely, the James B.
Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke. Ariely, the best-selling author of "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions," uses simple
experiments to study how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to
how they should or would perform if they were completely rational.
The public can meet the artists at the opening reception on
Dec. 16.
With no limitation to the style or media of pieces created
for "Creative Dishonesty: Cheat Codes," a portion of the artists, which
included sculptors, painters, and photographers, branched out stylistically
from their normal medium, while others pushed conceptual boundaries.
Albert Gilewicz, a sculptor, used Ethos bottled water as the
foundation for a sculpture exploring the truth behind branding and corporate
marketing.
Artist Kerry Cox created an interactive installation that
questions the nature of imagery as "moral" or "immoral" through
audience participation. In a similar vein, Bruce Mitchell and Adrian
Schlesinger created projects that inquire how to classify an image as “art”
after mechanical tools are used to enlarge, project, draft and print.
A comprehensive exhibit catalogue, including reflections by
the artists alongside responses from the curator and the researchers at the
Center for Advanced Hindsight, will be published and available for purchase.