Tino Sehgal

Tino Sehgal questions fundamental assumptions about material value, social convention, and the aesthetics of daily life through interactive, objectless artworks.

Tino Sehgal creates artworks out of the interactions and exchanges that constitute daily social life. Sehgal (b. 1976, London) designs "constructed situations" in which one or more people stage live works within the exhibition space according to the artist's directions. Through these encounters, the Berlin-based artist asks the museum visitor to reflect upon their participation in the landscape of value and meaning that comprises their everyday. These questions take on a particular resonance in China, a nation that has only recently shifted from an economy of scarcity to one of affluence. Once a society reaches a certain level of material comfort, what more do its members desire?

Using the art museum as a space to inspire dialogue and reflection, Sehgal’s open-ended artworks provide the scaffolding by which visitors might engage these questions. Sehgal’s exhibition at UCCA includes works that span the continuum of his artistic practice — from the choreographic to the discursive. Sehgal won the Golden Lion award at the 2013 Venice Biennale. In the same year, he was selected as one of four finalists for the Turner Prize, the winner to be announced in December.

Tino Sehgal