Monday, November 6, 2017

Artist Presentations - Tino Sehgal

Tino Sehgal

British-german artist, based in Berlin. Describes his work as “constructed situations.” Creates ephemeral, conceptual choreographies performed by trained professionals (or “interpreters”) generally staged in a museum setting. The artwork is the situation that arises between the audience and performers.

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Sehgal holding his Golden Lion award for best artist at 2013 Venice Biennale. The jury praised him “for the excellence and innovation that his practice has brought opening the field of artistic disciplines.”

This Success/This Failure (2007)

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Sehgal and performers during a practice of This Success/This Failure in London

In This Success/This Failure, children attempt to play without objects and may potentially draw viewers into their games.

This is So Contemporary (2005)

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In This is So Contemporary, museum guards dance joyfully and emphatically around visitors of the exhibition space while singing, “Oh, this is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary.” Some visitors were unamused and looked for an escape, while others were drawn into the cheeky scene and catchy melody, and began dancing and singing along.

Kiss (2007)

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Kiss taking place at the Guggenheim

First work in an American Museum in 2007. A living sculpture - two performers embrace and kiss, resembling couples from historical works of art including: Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss (1889), Constantin Brancusi’s The Kiss (1908), Jeff Koons and Cicciolina’s Made in Heaven (1990-91).

Selling Out (2002)

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Tino Sehgal’s Selling Out with Titus Elias, Amsterdam 2015

A performer mimes a striptease. Sehgal says of this piece “It was a kind of provocative way of saying ‘here are products which don’t use any material resources but they still generate income and GDP.’”

The point, says Mr. Hoffmann (curator of Sehgal’s Selling Out at the Biennial in Lyon France), is “Which is more seductive: the objects or this live action?”

Anne Midgette, from the New York Times:
“For some viewers, no doubt, this piece evokes ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’: Is there really anything there? But that is part of the point as well. Mr. Sehgal’s art exists, quite literally, only in the eye of the beholder.”
“Part of the point is to free art from the glut of material overproduction. But Mr. Sehgal, unlike many performance artists, is not protesting the art market itself. His work is specifically conceived to function within the art world’s conventions: it is lent and exhibited, bought and sold. It is sold, in fact - now that Sehgal is becoming a star in Europe - for five-figure sums.”

Some questions to consider: What is the relevancy of the museum setting to Sehgal’s work? What is his position on traditional/institutional values of art? Is he rejecting, mocking, celebrating or utilizing these frameworks? Are his intentions somewhere in between? Is he embedded in the art world, or does he display hybrid qualities? How important does he consider fixed intentions or expectations, given the relatively discombobulating nature of his works? What are the lasting effects of Sehgal’s work in the art world? In society?

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