Kristin Lucas, Magic Eyes Cream Headache Sandwich, 2005. Three-channel synchronized video installation, stereo sound, headphones. Courtesy the artist and Postmasters Gallery.

Much like the period following World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, today's anxieties have resulted in a resurgence in occult beliefs, and stage magic is again in vogue. The title of Goncharov’s group exhibition, Smoke and Mirrors: Magical Thinking in Contemporary Art, refers equally to performative magic and today’s culture, rife with disinformation, conspiracy theories, and “alternative facts.” The exhibition explores magic tricks developed for entertainment, but also hoaxes created for financial gain, and the increasingly sophisticated technology involved in deepfakes.

Goncharov takes inspiration from the late magician The Amazing Randi and his husband José Alvarez, Florida residents since the 1980s. The Amazing Randi, a world-renowned stage magician starting in the late 1940s, maintained that magicians are honest liars because a magician's audience knows they are being fooled, and devoted the second half of his career to debunking fraudulent paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Smoke and Mirrors will present artists and magicians alike, such as José Alvarez, Jeanette Andrews, Sarah Charlesworth, Mark Gibson, Alfredo Jaar, Christian Jankowski, Kristin Lucas, Tony Oursler, and The Yes Men, and mark the final major exhibition in Goncharov's stellar curatorial career.


Film still, Tony Oursler, Imponderable, 2015. 5D feature-length film. Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery.


Installation view, In the Event of Moon Disaster, Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund, 2019. On view in Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen, Museum of the Moving Image, New York. (Dec 18, 2021—May 15, 2022). Courtesy of Museum of Moving Image. Photo credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

Katheen Goncharov is the Senior Curator at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. She began her career in New York City in 1980 as Curator at Just Above Midtown Gallery (JAM) where she curated numerous performances, solo and group exhibitions. As Director of Exhibitions at Creative Time, she organized several iterations of Art on the Beach, Art in the Anchorage, and Central Park’s Summerstage performance festival as well as projects in unused space around New York. One of her first museum exhibitions was as co-curator of The UFO Show (1982) at the Queens Museum. For fourteen years, Goncharov served as Curator of the Collection at The New School where she built a major collection of contemporary art and organized numerous public programs, symposia, and initiated and oversaw the design of the Vera List Courtyard by Martin Puryear and Michael Van Valkenburgh. 

She also curated projects and traveled to Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay with a special grant from the United States Information Agency. As US Commissioner to the 50th Venice Biennale Goncharov curated an exhibition by Fred Wilson. She has also worked internationally as US Curator to the Cairo Biennale, New Delhi Triennale and curator of exhibitions and performances in Venice, Rome, and Bologna. As Public Art Curator at the List Visual Art Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology she led the Institute’s Percent-for Art Program, proposed and oversaw new public art commissions and managed its permanent collection. She served as Adjunct Curator at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University where she curated its first contemporary exhibition in its new building. As Executive Director of the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University, Goncharov brought international artists to its artist-in-residence program.

Kelly Kivland, Wexner Center for the Arts