TINO SEHGAL
Opening September 5, 2007 (permanent exhibition)
CCA Wattis Institute for
Contemporary Arts
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street
San Francisco CA 94107
T: 415.551.9210
The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents Tino Sehgal’s first solo show in the United States, opening September 5, 2007, and on view indefinitely thereafter. This permanent exhibition will feature all of Sehgal’s existing works to date as well as new works configured specifically for the Wattis Institute. The pieces will be presented one at a time and will appear concurrently with the Wattis’s other exhibitions and programs.
Taking the framework of a traditional retrospective but removing its time constraints, this continuous, gradual presentation of a single artist’s oeuvre will allow audiences to follow and engage with Sehgal’s practice in new ways. The project will also investigate how an art institution can commit to the development and understanding of one artist’s career in a manner that extends beyond the confines of conventional exhibition practice.
Sehgal does not produce material objects. Rather, he engages his audiences through transformative actions without producing anything tangible or object-based that would leave a physical trace. Coming from a background in dance and economics, both of which continue to influence him, he stages situations that are enacted in a gallery space by one or several people over the duration of an exhibition. His past works have involved a person rolling on the floor (Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things, 2000), a couple engaged in a kiss (Kiss, 2002), and four generations discussing the relative merits of progress (This Progress, 2006). Sehgal has worked with a diverse range of interpreters, including academics, children, school classes, the socially disadvantaged, and museum guards, using the human voice, language, movement, and social interaction to create ephemeral works of art that are intended to challenge, and enchant, the viewer.
About the Artist
Tino Sehgal was born in London in 1976 and currently lives and works in Berlin. He has had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2007, 2006, 2005); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2006); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2006); the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2006); Hamburger Kunstverein, Germany (2006); Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2004); Musée des Beaux-arts de Nantes, France (2004); and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands (2004). He has participated in the Lyon Biennial, France (2007); the Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2006); the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005); the Venice Biennale (2003); and Manifesta, Frankfurt, Germany (2002). Sehgal represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2005. In 2006 he was nominated for the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. He received the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel, Switzerland, in 2004 and the Kunstpreis der Böttcherstrasse in Bremen, Germany, in 2003.
Founding support for CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts programs has been provided by Phyllis C. Wattis and Judy and Bill Timken. Generous support provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Ann Hatch and Paul Discoe, and the CCA Curator’s Forum.
