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Indepth Arts News:
"Tino Sehgal: Where the Artist Creates Experiences through Expression"
2007-12-12 until 2008-03-23
Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, MN,
USA
The Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal
wants to reconsider production, both artistically and economically, by
creating immaterial and more sustainable forms of generating meaning
and beauty. The solo exhibition Tino Sehgal will be on view at the Walker
Art Center December 12, 2007–March 23, 2008. One of the leading artists of his generation, Sehgal has been making art without actually creating any objects. His working method often involves
instructing people—adults, teenagers, and children—to use their bodies
and voices to construct situations in which they interact with spectators
and their surroundings. Insisting that his installations share time and space
with the public, he presents them inside museums rather than theater
stages to incite viewer’s response, improvisation, and possibly
participation. His stance on spectators as an active and engaged
counterpart has infused his work with a distinctive sense of humor, wit, and
political undertone. As the artist has stated, “There’s no possibility not to
act. So everything you do, even if it doesn’t seem like acting, produces an
effect.”
Resorting to an economy of actions, Sehgal’s work proposes a dynamic
take on the idea of the expanded concept of art, arguing for a process of
production that revolves around the spectator and his or her individual
exchanges and the embodiments of movements and language presented
by his interpreters. Immediacy takes the forefront in Sehgal’s artistic
program. He requests that his installations are not be photographed or
recorded in a gesture that reconsiders the value of time, contemplation,
and participation.
The exhibition Tino Sehgal, the artist’s largest U.S. museum show to date,
features five continuous “live” pieces that require the employment of
some 50 individuals, including Walker staff members, local artists, amateur
singers, and practicing dancers living in the Twin Cities who serve as
interpreters. The works—Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your
face dancing bruce and dan and other things (2000), This is good (2001),
This is propaganda (2002), This is new (2003), and This is about (2003)—are
presented in selected galleries and public spaces throughout the building,
starting at the lobby desk and including guided tours of the collection.
Tino Sehgal was born in 1976 in London and currently lives in Berlin. After
studying political economics and dance, he began presenting his work in
museums and galleries, including Tate Britain and the Institute of
Contemporary Arts, London; Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d’Art
Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Kunsthaus
Bregenz, and Kunstverein Hamburg, Germany; Fundação Serralves, Porto;
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Art Gallery
of Ontario, Toronto; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. He was nominated
for the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum, New
York, and was one of two artists representing Germany at the 2005 Venice
Biennale.
Tino Sehgal is organized by Walker assistant curator Yasmil Raymond, in
close collaboration with the artist.
Walker Art Center programming is made possible by its Premier Partners:
Best Buy, General Mills, Piper Jaffray, Target, Star Tribune, and WCCO-TV.
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