Tino Sehgal
3 February-19 March 2006
12 7.30pm daily
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH
Phone: 44 20 7930 3647
www.ica.org.uk
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 artists 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.
The exhibition has been kindly supported by The Felix Trust for Art, London and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Stuttgart.
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 Sehgals 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 Sehgals 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 Sehgals 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 Sehgals 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 Sehgals 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 SW1Y 5AH
Phone: 44 (0)20 7930 3647
Fax: 44 (0)20 7306 0122
Email: info@ica.org.uk www.ica.org.uk
