Tino Sehgal

Tino Sehgal works with singing, dancing and speech in art works that are best described as ‘situations’. An example: you step into an empty exhibition space in an art museum, whereupon three attendants get up off their chairs and start leaping around in circles waving their arms and shouting “This is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary!” Then one of them says “Tino Sehgal” and another “2003”, which is followed by all three in unison shouting, “Courtesy of Galerie Mot”, before resuming their seats in a deadpan manner. It’s a somewhat bizarre scenario to witness on entering an art museum where you might instead be expecting to find sculptures, videos or paintings. Many are puzzled by his works. Indeed, some find them something of an embarrassment and scuttle past as though they had not noticed them. Others approach the attendants to find out what’s behind it all, but to no avail. The attendants have been instructed by Tino Sehgal to perform their little act if a guest enters, and thereafter do nothing. But if you hang around, you’ll get to see the little performance again and again. Sehgal’s works might be compared to sculptures, except that, instead of being of bronze and stone, they comprise ephemeral human acts – speech, singing and dancing. So in that respect they resemble theatrical performances, or some kind of recitation. His art is rooted in performance and conceptual art, to which some of his works make reference, thereby revivifying art history in the present. But what did the attendants mean by ‘This is so contemporary’? We are hardly in any doubt that it is present-day art and so something new. But perhaps it is a send-up of itself and the notion of the new more generally. Or of the fact that we are fixated by new technology and turn into cackling hens running round in circles in our enthusiasm for the new – the newest mobile, Powerbook, iPod or flat panel television – all promising to keep us ahead of the curve. Sehgal’s art has to be experienced, not least because there are no pictures of his work. He creates no record of his pieces and produces no physical objects. Jan Mot, his gallerist in Brussels, shows his works by having them performed for the gallery visitors. And purchasers of his works pay the money and receive a set of oral instructions. Sehgal’s contribution to Karriere has not yet been determined, but you’re sure to hear about it. (PKE)

Tino Sehgal, born 1976, London.