Certain arrangements

More about the book

As the world reels from the recent financial meltdown, the always-relevant artist collective Jochen Schmith makes its comment on the situation -- and on the perennial question of how value is determined in the art world -- with the fascinating site-based project documented in this catalog. A bunch of tulips at the entry to the Salve Hospes Villa tips you the subject is the first great speculative bubble, Dutch merchant banks gambling on tulip bulbs in the 1630s, which ended in massive financial disaster and prices plunging more than 95 percent. As viewers tour the bourgeois villa, they experience interventions set up by Jochen Schmith -- founded in 2000 by Carola Wagenplast, Peter Hoppe, and Peter Steckroth -- like projections, veils and a copy of the stolen Brueghel painting ''Flowers in a Glass Vase'' painted by an assembly line in China. A playful, smart and thought-provoking project.