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Earlier this month, a very special issue of The New York Times was dispersed on the streets of New York City. Dated July 4, 2009, it announced "Iraq War Ends: Troops to Return Immediately."

Inside the issue, readers lucky enough to get one of the 1.2 million copies distributed by volunteers were privy to even more false hopes: salary caps for CEOs, a free university education for all and the passing of a "National Health Insurance Act" are just a few stories in this too-good-to-be-true edition.

Obviously not a real issue of The New York Times, it was a hoax masterminded by longtime liberal pranksters The Yes Men, who are showcasing the prank along with several more they have perpetrated over the past decade in their first ever solo-exhibition, "Keep It Slick," at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University.

"It was planned with a whole bunch of other organizations and it was a fortunate coincidence that the show was opening a few days later," says Mike Bonanno, who, along with collaborator Andy Bichlbaum, make up The Yes Men.

Through elaborate hoaxes like this one, such as fake corporate Web sites that look just like the real thing and impersonating representatives of powerful corporations at professional-level conferences, The Yes Men have taken to task many large-scale organizations from Dow Chemical to the World Trade Organization, by suggesting that they place profit above everything else. And along the way, they have gained international acclaim and notoriety for their efforts to expose dehumanizing business practices and helping to keep critical issues in the international spotlight.

Co-organized by the Feldman Gallery at Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Miller Gallery, "Keep It Slick" exhibits The Yes Men's escapades with elaborate costumes, slapstick videos, outrageous posters and selections from their personal collections. Although their sociopolitical pranks at conferences, on television and on the Web have been widely publicized, they have never been presented on such a large scale.

Here, you can walk into a re-creation of their past exploits in the Conference area, witness a comically apocalyptic future, and pay your respects to a janitor who generously donated his body to satisfy our insatiable energy needs. In the Executive Board Room, you may browse through The Yes Men's personal office items and orate along to their absurd PowerPoint presentations.

On the third floor of the gallery, for example, the largest wall contains a mural in the form of an apocalyptic version of Pittsburgh. Nearby, in large letters, it reads: "It is possible to drain power from any living creature to power the suit."

The line refers to the two "SurvivaBalls" that hang from the ceiling in front of the mural.

Created by The Yes Men, the "SurvivaBalls" are inflatable, spherical white suits meant to be worn by executives forced to live in "extreme conditions." Funny looking to say the least, having three sets of nub-like protrusions that make them look like oversized grubs, they are prototypes whose "communication systems, nutrient-gathering capacities and defense mechanisms" ensure the safety of corporate managers from Mother Nature.

Here, they not only present two of the suits, but also photographs and support materials used for a conference on catastrophic loss they crashed in May 2006 at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., presenting the SurvivaBall as an alleged project of the military contractor Halliburton.

Also on display is a makeshift shrine to "Reggie the Janitor." It's a reference to a prank the pair pulled at a 2007 Gas and Oil Exposition in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, at which Bonanno and Bichlbaum impersonated industry officials and announced a plan to turn human flesh into fuel.

The oilmen in attendance listened attentively, and then lit "commemorative candles" supposedly made of the flesh-fuel product that the two dubbed "Vivoleum." Reportedly, the crowd went along with it until The Yes Men showed a video in which an "Exxon janitor" announced that he wished to be transformed into candles after his death, which supposedly came as a result of cleaning up a toxic spill.

Astria Suparak, director of the Miller Gallery, says, "The Yes Men are among the most visible and effective activist-artists of our time, reaching countless people through Web sites, newspapers and television broadcasts. Over the past decade, they have fearlessly taken on the world's biggest corporations and bureaucracies, infiltrating the elite realm of the influential and the moneyed. Cloaked in the sheerest layer of authority -- thrift-store suits, quick-print business cards, forged press releases -- these social activators urge us to question where ethics belong in our capitalist-driven society."

It's worth noting before going that it will take some time to digest all of the information included in this exhibition. News coverage of the pranks and TV interviews are on display in a loop in the gallery's first floor exhibition space. Videos that The Yes Men presented at various conferences are on a loop in the Conference area on the second floor. And press releases about the pranks and conference scripts can be perused in the "Board Room" on the third floor.

"The show requires quite a bit of interpretation," Bonanno says. "Since these are all relics of our practice, they all make more sense if you follow the individual narrative threads from the conference and TV appearances that required their construction in the first place.

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