In the introduction to his long feature on Tino Sehgal in the New York Times magazine, long-time dance critic Arthur Lubow describes his first experience of a Sehgal piece thusly: "I first encountered Tino Sehgal’s work under ideal conditions: total ignorance." I can relate. I had heard of Sehgal (left), knew he did something related to performance, but knew little more; so when I wandered into the AGO's 4th floor gallery during a media preview last week and found a young couple gamely making out in the middle of the room, I felt I had stumbled into a moment of impromptu intimacy, and spun awkwardly on my heel to go. A few steps out, and it hit me: This was, in fact, Sehgal's 2002 piece "Kiss," functioning perhaps exactly as it ought to -- as a stealthy interruption to the conventional museum-going experience. Aha.
There are certainly those who will choose to see Sehgal's work as a showy contrivance, to be sure; "Kiss" is mannered, structured and, quite apart from its cousin in public intervention, is built to function in an art-institutional context. All that being the case, I'm not one of them: Observing "Kiss" play out amid the throngs of AGO-goers over the weekend, it self-justified quite nicely as viewers stood puzzled at the threshold, or ignored it completely. The shudder of discomfort I witnessed as one of the performers, unprompted, locked eyes with the viewer, said a lot to me about our disjointed relationship with both intimacy and art-viewing itself. We don't live in a static world -- why should art be?
In any case, a clipped version of these discussions appeared in the paper today, under my name, in the name of space (which, apparently, we have a serious dearth of these days). So I'm turn to a place where space isn't a limited commodity, the internet, to offer my full version. The photo below is of Ame Henderson and Mairead Filgate, Sehgal collaborators who I spoke to for the piece.
MURRAY WHYTE
Visual Arts Critic
On a cold and blustery afternoon last weekend, Ame Henderson
and Mairead Filgate sat at the Art Gallery of Ontario, watching intently as an
enraptured couple groped, fondled and caressed each other, their faces drawing
close now and again to share a long, tender kiss.
They were among the minority here who chose to watch the
proceedings so closely. At the thresholds of the small side gallery where these
delicate throes of publicly-displayed passion were taking place, small crowds
gathered, daring to go no further, as if held back by an invisible rope.
“We saw a woman walk through with her five-year old, holding
a coat in front of her face,” said Henderson. “It provokes a lot of confusion
for people.”
What “it” is, exactly, can be a little mind-bending. Simply,
the couple – one of seven, locked in embrace in rotating shifts from the moment
the gallery opens to the time it closes, every day – is embodying Tino Sehgal’s
aptly-named “Kiss,” a 2002 work of art donated to the AGO in 2008. Henderson
performed the Sehgal piece here in 2006; she’s working as Sehgal’s overseer for
this installation. Filgate is one of the seven performing it now, until August
1.
Just 33 years old, Sehgal, who was born in England but lives
in Berlin, has struck a nerve in the art world. He’s been showing at
significant museums in Europe for almost a decade, while a major survey of
Sehgal’s work just closed at the Guggenheim in New York. The Museum of Modern
Art owns “Kiss” as well (it exists in an edition of four).
At the AGO, Sehgal’s work shares space, if not sensibility,
with a handful of tell-tale pieces: Constantin Brancusi’s stone-carved “The
Kiss,” from 1908, and a bronze casting of Auguste Rodin’s 1889 sculpture of the
same name. If you could stand to watch long enough, you’d see the couple ape
the poses from both of them, among others, moving from one intimate
entanglement to the next.
Even for those involved, it’s hard to put to words just what
“Kiss” is, exactly. Don’t call it performance art, Sehgal says: Defying that
tradition, he prohibits it from being photographed. No record exists – even the
gallery’s ownership of it is an oral contract. He demands the only thing left behind is the trace memory in
the viewer’s mind.
While it appears gently spontaneous, it’s tightly planned.
“Every single movement is choreographed,” Henderson said. But don’t call it dance
(Sehgal doesn’t). “It’s like the
material to make this piece come to form is trained dancers, but it’s not
anything like what we do, typically,” she said. “There’s no duration to the
work – it’s all day, every day. It has no meaning in time – no dance is like
that.”
Its challenges stretch beyond what to call it. Prior to this
installation, Filgate performed “Kiss” as a one-day special for Valentine’s Day
this year in the gallery’s main atrium. “People yelled things like “Get a
room!’” she said. This time, in the galleries themselves, it’s been a little
different.
“When people come in – if they come in – most act like we’re
invisible,” she says. The
performers are instructed to occasionally make eye contact, but it’s tough
going. “I crave that contact,” Filgate says, “but most people just look away.”
In a setting where most museum-goers are accustomed to and
prepared for looking at inanimate objects hanging on the wall or poised inert
on the floor, Sehgal’s work is a potent challenge to an art collection as the
accumulation of tangible things. He insists the only trace his works leave
behind are the memories in viewers’ minds.
His works range from the jarringly silly – in 2001’s “This
Is Good,” a museum guard would wave his arms and hop on one foot whenever
someone entered the the room, saying “Tino Seghal. ‘This Is Good,’ 2001 – to
the mildly confrontational: “This Situation,” his debut work in New York at the
Marian Goodman Gallery in 2007, saw performers engage viewers in an
intensely-scripted, platitude-laden conversation. “I often see shows I don’t
like,” wrote New York magazine’s art critic Jerry Saltz, “but this was the only
show I’ve ever seen that didn’t like me.” He pegged it as the best of the year.
In the small gallery at the AGO, a few generations of a
family – parents, grandparents, kids, young adults – unknowingly wandered as
far as the Rodin and stopped dead. “Kiss” had reached the point in its circuit
where the man lay prone on the floor, straddled by his partner, who looked up
to catch the eye of the young man. A quick shrug, and they hurried along.
“It’s funny,” Henderson said. “It’s okay to look at all
sorts of images that are sexually charged, even violent, but as soon as they’re
not 2-D, it asks something so different. It’s so strange that real, gentle
intimacy is so dangerous.”
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