We might have suspected that the School 33 Art Center exhibition Boundary Crossings, with its elaborately punctuated subtitle — (social) identity/ (physical) body /(virtual) landscape — was not quite what it seemed.

After all, the show was curated by Christine Bailey, who last month caused a stir when she exhibited paintings in a downtown office building that more or less mimicked exactly the style of fellow artist Cara Ober.

When Ober condemned Bailey’s imitations as artistic plagiarism, Bailey told The Sun her show was basically an experiment in appropriated identities, a theme she also had explored in previous exhibitions.

So we weren’t totally surprised to discover that the three artists in Boundary Crossings — Ariana Wol, Nadine Freund and the “international digital collective” A.N.N.A. — are actually all creatures of Bailey’s own mischievous invention.

She pulled them out of a hat, so to speak, complete with respectable curricula vitae. Then she made artworks for them to display and “curated” their efforts in this brainy “group” show.

What’s surprising is how well the whole thing works. The illusion is seamless, though in Baltimore’s small, close-knit art community you might well wonder why you never heard of these artists before.

Wol is a performance artist who documents her activities in short films and still photographs. The “collective” A.N.N.A. appropriates images of IKEA’s bland, online customer service rep and has her brush off pesky callers in eight languages.

The most arresting piece in the show is Freund’s 20-minute animated video of a pine tree set against a constantly changing landscape. It’s a deceptively simple but hypnotic image that just keeps drawing you in.

Bailey is a clever and versatile artist whose true subject is the mutability of identity and the artificiality of art. The show’s main draw is its invitation to willing suspension of disbelief, along with a good-humored submission to the multilayered illusion spun by Bailey’s invented cast of characters.

The exhibit runs through March 8 at School 33 Art Center, 1427 Light St. Call 410-396-4641 or go to school33.org.

(Above: Still from projection work by Nadine Freund)