b-uncut

Tino Seghal at the Guggenheim

// March 4th, 2010 // b-scene // b-uncut

After reading the recent blog about the exhibition of Billy Childish, I couldn’t help but contemplate the artist as an “outsider” with regard to London born artist Tino Seghal’s current exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York. Seghal’s unconventional installations attempt to challenge the traditional context in which art is created and exhibited. I’m reminded of the artists of the 1970s who began to work outside the system with performance and land art as well as the “happenings” that were occurring in the crux of the contemporary art movements in New York, Berlin, London and universities throughout the world.

Seghal’s work is shown in one of the most elitist museums which of course defines the limitations of the art market’s system. The artist’s practice has been shaped through his interest and education in dance and economics. An unlikely combination of studies, I thought…But then realised that the study of economics likely had the strongest impact on Seghal’s interest to work outside the system.

For the first time in the Guggenheim’s history, an artist was allowed to wipe out the entire rotunda of its permanent collection–which was made up mostly of Kandinsky masterpieces. The elimination of the rotunda’s masterpieces was probably intended to make the situation less elitist, but really, can that highbrow stigma attached to the museum and its architecture ever be eliminated? And if it can’t, does this make Seghal’s intentions pointless?

By displacing the art typically adorning Frank Llyod Wright’s walls, Seghal’s interactive “installation” becomes a one-on-one experience with the viewer and the artist’s medium–actors who are essentially Seghal’s puppets. Some might call the situations theatrical; Seghal would disagree, arguing that theatre, unlike his work, creates a separation between the actor and audience, and also has a definitive starting and stopping point. In the center of the Guggenheim’s lobby are two actors engaging in embracing and kissing–this is meant to be interactive between the viewer and actor?

So the artist as an outsider…like most of the land artists like Robert Smithson that were sucked back into the system unintentionally by exhibiting and selling their plans, photographs and maps, Seghal’s interactions are just as much a part of the system (if not more) as the earthwork artists. The institution now has rights to the work and can stage the performance wherever they want, whenever they want (with some stipulations from the artist of course– like the actors must be chosen by the artist, and the performance must last for a minimum of 6 weeks). Refusing the system? I don’t think so. Accepting and embracing is more like it.