Tino Sehgal

Following the Guggenheim’s Wassily Kandinsky retrospective in the fall—a blockbuster that filled the famed rotunda and its side galleries with hundreds of canvases and works on paper—the museum was completely cleared out. The bare architecture became the frame for two “constructed situations” by London-born, Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal. The thirty-four-year-old artist has exhibited his loosely choreographed conceptual performances at gallery, museum and art fair spaces since the early 2000s. Visitors to the Guggenheim found the main exhibition space void of objects but full of people. The ticket and membership counters were moved from the lobby to an outer vestibule for the duration of the exhibition, allowing visitors to gather in a circle on the ground floor. At first glance, the centre of their attention appeared to be a kissing couple, two visitors lying on the floor in an embrace. Yet, watching the scene, one periodically heard the kissers announce “The Kiss. Tino Sehgal. 2002,” identifying their charade as a work of art. Every few hours they rotated out for a break and were replaced by new performers. Though not stated, Sehgal’s “interpreters”—trained dancers—were re-enacting embraces from well-known paintings and sculptures.

The Kiss was on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, which purchased an edition of the work last year in its new initiative to collect performance art. Reminiscent of Jean Tinguely’s infamous, self-destroying kinetic sculpture assembled in the MOMA Sculpture Garden in 1960, Sehgal’s work, and the excitement surrounding it, is a result of its basic antagonism to museum collection and preservation. The artist, committed to an art consisting solely of human interactions, insists that his work be completely immaterial. This means that all of the business is conducted orally, unlike most works of conceptual art for which one receives at least printed instructions, a receipt and a certificate of authentication. Sehgal prohibits photographic reproduction of his work as well as the publication of exhibition catalogues and wall texts. Ideally, this would mean there would be unsuspecting visitors who would get to experience the shock of seeing a couple passionately making out on the floor of the Guggenheim, and then the subsequent shock when they realize the situation is a sanctioned work of art. However, by the time the Sehgal exhibition opened to the public, detailed reviews were widely available. The New York Times’s review even included photos of The Kiss taken via iPhone, despite the artist’s wishes and the museum’s vehement instruction that photography was prohibited.

The Kiss, a conceptual trick creating a diverting scene in the museum lobby, was partnered with This Progress, a work that remains vital even after the publication of its details. Climbing the ramp that leads up from the museum’s rotunda, visitors encountered a small group of children. A young boy or girl introduced him- or herself and became the visitors’ first guide. While each visitor’s experience of this work was different due to the performer’s freedom to improvise, it always began with the child, approximately ten years of age, introducing him- or herself, shaking the visitor’s hand, asking, “What is progress?” After the visitor provided an answer, the child asked for an illustrating example as he or she led the visitor to a checkpoint several steps up the ramp. Here, the child handed the visitor off to a second guide who was in his or her late teens. Before leaving, the child informed the visitor of the work’s title, This Progress. Tino Sehgal. 2006, and conveyed the visitor’s answers to the next guide, who then continued the conversation while leading the visitor further up the ramp. The teen led to a middle-aged guide, who in turn led to a sixty- or seventy-year-old guide. Sehgal’s script allowed for conversations to wander, just as they do normally. After I met my final guide, Flora, we began discussing photographer Eadweard Muybridge, whose wife was also named Flora. As with our conversation, many continued even after the guide/visitor pair reached the end-point at the top of the ramp. Repeated trips confirmed that the diversity of the guides, New Yorkers selected at open casting calls, ensured an unpredictable trajectory to each journey up the ramp.

In many ways, This Progress resembled a simple chat with strangers, which is common enough in Manhattan, whether it is in the line at the supermarket or with visiting tourists looking for directions. The contrast provided by a more traditional museum setting that included painting and sculpture would have improved the Guggenheim installation, making Sehgal’s conversation with art history—a story of objects and their perceived value—more explicit. ❚

“Tino Sehgal” was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York from January 29 to March 10, 2010.

Alexander B D Kauffman writes on art and architecture. He lives in New York and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.