Tino Sehgal (image via artinfo.com)
The Tate Modern just announced its selection for the 2012 Turbine Hall commission, and the winner is none other than your favorite relational aesthetics artist and mine, Mr. Tino Sehgal. But with Sehgal’s outlawing of any photo documentation of his works, will we actually get to see the piece?
Sehgal’s work isn’t object-based; it resides in the experiences and interaction of viewers. As an aesthetic choice, the artist has embargoed all photo documentation of his work. The only pictures that have trickled out of Sehgal’s pieces are some “surreptitious” iPhone pics published in the New York Times on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition “This Progress” at the Guggenheim, and even then those were photos of “The Kiss”, not even the main work in the show. So does this mean that photos of the Turbine Hall installation will be similarly suppressed? As hilarious as that would be, I don’t think it’s possible.
When artists hit the Turbine Hall, anarchy follows. Think visitors grabbing handfuls of (poisonous) sunflower seeds from Ai Weiwei’s 2010 installation in the space. Anyway, I’m excited to see what Sehgal will pull off. His installation, an accompaniment to the 2012 London Olympics, will follow a commission from Tacita Dean opening in October 2011.
Tino Sehgal’s Turbine Hall installation (JK it’s empty) (image via tate.org)
I guess whatever he’s doing, only could be “seen” when the Tate will be closed!