Sehgal presents an exclusive new work, which imaginatively explores and encompasses all the exhibition spaces at the ICA. His designs situations that take the form of fleeting gestures based on movement and the spoken word, with one or several people acting out a set of instructions over the duration of an exhibition.
Solo show
This is the second of three solo exhibitions by artist Tino Sehgal taking place
between 2005 and 2007 at the ICA.
This series of shows is designed to provide audiences with a unique opportunity to
follow the development of the artist over a three-year period. The first exhibition
provided an introduction to the artist’s practice and featured both his earliest and
most recent pieces. For this second exhibition, Sehgal presents an exclusive new
work, which imaginatively explores and encompasses all the exhibition spaces at the
ICA.
A background in choreography and political economy has played a fundamental role in
his development of an artistic practice, which does not produce tangible objects or
any form of material trace. Sehgal designs situations that take the form of fleeting
gestures based on movement and the spoken word, with one or several people acting
out a set of instructions over the duration of an exhibition.
Sehgal fulfils the conventions of a visual artwork without physically producing
anything: assembling meaning through his direction of people rather than creating
physical objects. Over his career, Sehgal has worked with a variety of interpreters
on his pieces, including museum guards, singers, children, academics and socially
disadvantaged communities, to create highly provisional pieces of art that challenge
traditional museological contexts. The human voice, language, movement and
interaction are the artistic materials with which Sehgal stakes out a radical
position within the field of the visual arts.
Sehgal views visual art as being completely interrelated with society, functioning
along identical economic conditions, namely the production and exchange of goods and
commodities. He is interested in challenging these conditions by creating artworks
through a transformation of actions rather than solid materials, producing meaning
in effect through a transitory and temporary situation. Throughout his work Sehgal
explores social processes, conventions and the allocation of roles, thus questioning
the fundamental elements of not only art practice, but also the art system: idea,
originality, producer, viewer, owner and market value.
Tino Sehgal was born in London in 1976 and currently lives in Berlin.
TINO SEHGAL IN CONVERSATION WITH DR. SIMON GLENDINNING
Monday 6 February, 7pm
Tino Sehgal will be in conversation with Dr. Simon Glendinning, Fellow in European
Philosophy, London School of Economics, and the author of On Being With Others:
Heidegger-Derrida-Wittgenstein (Routledge 1998) and General Editor of The Edinburgh
Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy (EUP, 1999). Dr. Glendinning has also written
widely on the nature of animal life, on perception, and metaphilosophy and is
currently writing a book on the European inheritance of phenomenology. He was also
one the Interpreters of Tino Sehgal’s work This Objective Of That Object (2004),
presented at the ICA in 2005.
For tickets call +44 20 7596 4000. This event will take place at the
Goethe-Institut, 50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2PH
ICA GALLERY TALKS ON TINO SEHGAL:
Saturday 11 February, 3pm
Tom Morton
Tom Morton is a writer, critic and curator. He is Contributing Editor of frieze
magazine and the curator of Cubitt, London. His talk will focus on how Sehgal’s work
operates within art world systems.
Tuesday 21 Feb, 6.30pm
Jens Hoffmann
With his unusual work of constructing temporary situations and encounters in gallery
spaces Sehgal .is pushing visual arts to its furthest boundaries while still
maneuvering in the traditional setting of a white cube art gallery. Jens Hoffmann,
ICA Director of Exhibitions, will speak about the idea behind inviting Sehgal to
exhibit his work at the ICA over the period of three years, why he believes that
Sehgal’s work is among the most thought provoking and progressive art practices of
our time and how this ties in with the over all curatorial concept of the visual
arts programme at the ICA.
Sunday 26 February, 3pm
Dorothea von Hantelmann
Dorothea von Hantelmann is an art historian, lecturer, writer and freelance curator
based in Berlin. She has worked extensively on the notion and meaning of
performativity in contemporary arts and has curated various art projects related to
this subject. Apart from having written on the work of Sehgal, she has also been an
interpreter in one of his pieces in a recent gallery show in Berlin. From this
perspective she will draw a line to his new exhibition in London, to ideologies and
concepts of progress in visual art and to the experience of processing through an
exhibition.
Saturday 4 March, 3pm
Claire Fitzsimmons
In her talk, Claire Fitzsimmons, Curator of ICA Exhibitions, will approach Sehgal’s
work from a social perspective, examining how the artist not only questions the
fundamental elements of the art market, production and institutions, but also how
his work addresses key political issues such as the environment, the economy and the
socially disadvantaged.
Saturday 11 March, 3pm
Carey Jewitt
Carey Jewitt researches new technology and multimodal representation and
communication and is based at the London Knowledge Lab, University of London. Her
most recent book is Technology, Literacy and Learning: A multimodal Approach to New
Technologies (2006) published by Routledge. In this talk Carey Jewitt will explore
the idea of the object, technology and interpretation in relation to Sehgal’s work
at the ICA.
Saturday 18 March, 3pm
Pip Laurenson
Pip Laurenson is Head of Time-Based Media Conservation for the Tate Collection. She
will talk about the questions raised by the collection of a work by Tino Sehgal for
conservation and the museum. Titled "The museum and the intangible", Laurenson
will ask whether it is possible to conserve the work of Sehgal.
All Gallery Talks are free with ICA Day Membership and take place in the Lower
Gallery.
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall - London