Reena Spaulings Fine Art is pleased to present You Have Been Misinformed, an exhibition by Munich-based artist Stephan Dillemuth and London-based artist Nils Norman.

Reinterpreting some of the formal elements of an obsolete modernist plaza in NYC’s financial district – 77 Water Street – the artists invoke some of the more glamorous days of Manhattan, when arts and financial markets started with a certain optimism to weave the global fabric. Plopped into the “Plaza” is an installation of video fragments that recreate articles and quotes from the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune as performance pieces reporting on art finance, the credit crunch and the new class of mega-rich art patrons.

As public spaces have become privatized, the arts have entered a new phase, becoming merely another alternative asset of dubious financial schemes and speculations. The installation and videos reflect upon these developments and the connections between the declarations of Sotheby’s chief executive Bill Ruprecht, the machinations of Ukrainian industrial entrepreneur Victor Pinchuk and the mad apocalyptic ravings of CNBC financial pundit Jim Cramer.

Plaster trees, a plywood seating area, hanging Plexiglas-fronted canvases and a vaguely Prairie School-derived pedestrian bridge are some of the basic structures with which the artists stage the arrival of an especially jittery new art season. This is a credit crunch, pre-art crunch extravaganza – don’t miss it!

Previous Dillemuth and Norman collaborations include The Bohemia Research Garret, Baltimore Museum of Art, 2005, Friesenwall 120 Ruined, in the group show Make Your Own Life: Art In and Out of Cologne (curated by Bennett Simpson) at ICA Philadelphia and other venues, 2006, and A Mysterious Thing, Vilma Gold, London, 2007.