At Vancouver Access Artist Run Centre until May 6

Everything the artist spits is art. So Kurt Schwitters once famously declared. That everything includes acts not only of outrageousness and absurdity but also of paradox and banality. Such as buying stocks. Such as presenting an investment seminar at a Downtown Eastside artist-run centre.

Yup, on April 8, at the Access gallery on Carrall Street, a public talk about buying and selling options on the stock market took place against a backdrop of a half-tonne of shredded financial papers and a glossy oversize poster. The buying and tracking of stocks, the talk, the poster, and the hefty pile of shredded paper, installed within a big, bulging, architectural V-all are aspects of Gloom, Doom & Boom by emerging Vancouver artist Christian Kliegel.

Kliegel has accrued a short, smart history of investigating the institutions and structures (both abstract and concrete) within which artists must function. Having examined the conveying of power and authority in the contexts of exhibitions and archives, he has now shifted his focus to the stock market.

Part of what his current project proposes is the humorous/idealistic notion that if young artists could live off their investments, they could quit their shitty day jobs and spend all their time making art. Kliegel is curious about the relationship between the worlds of art collecting and investment.

The seminar, organized by Kliegel, was presented by Charles Haynes, a former architect turned software designer, stock analyst, and Web-site publisher (www.GoldSpinner.com/). Haynes delivered his talk straight and without condescension, communicating a humane understanding of both his subject and his downmarket audience. Despite Kliegel's stated attraction to the idea of the artist as "prankster" or "dilettante", his project comes across not as satire, camp, or trickery but as a form of access.

As promised on Kliegel's poster, Haynes spoke about some of the arcanities of trading options, including debit and credit spreads, straddles, and strangles. Still, after all was explained and illustrated, the sense persisted that the wealth thus generated by is reaped largely by the already wealthy. Don't give up your day job just yet.