Tulipomania, or tulip mania, was a period in 17th century Holland during which the contract prices, and demand, for tulip bulbs reached astronomical highs – with single bulbs fetching prices equivalent to those of luxury homes. The flower was such a prized commodity that a futures market developed for the bulbs, and when frenzy and speculation was at its height (1636-7), the market suddenly crashed. It is considered to be one of the first recorded economic bubbles, or speculative bubbles.
A symbol of wealth and beauty, and ultimately one of human and financial folly, the tulip was at the center of a madness born of valuing a thing so exquisitely useless.
With her new series Jill Sylvia continues to explore notions of “value” employing ledger sheets as her medium. She takes these pages (traditionally used to record the financial transactions of a business or an individual) and subjects them to a process which itself could be described as maniacal. Sylvia uses a drafting knife to individually remove tens of thousands of boxes from this paper, leaving behind the lattice of the grid intended to separate the boxes. Grids are then reconstructed, utilizing the excised boxes as units of the picture plane.
This time Sylvia’s balance sheets and “reconstructions” take the form of tulip fields. White pages become the steely, Dutch sky while yellows, creams and whites, some shot through with traces of red-ink handwriting, become the petals with the greens as their stems and leaves.