“In 2009 I went to Brussels to see a Tino Sehgal show at Galerie Jan Mot. It was not long after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and everything was being read as an expression of crisis. This was also my approach to an oeuvre I had been following for around seven years (in the early 2000s, after some time working in contemporary dance, Sehgal had begun realizing his works in an art context). In this case, however, the crisis in question affected the inner dynamic of the work itself: This is Critique emulated all of the fundamental critiques of Sehgal’s approach, from the charge of luddism (to this day, Sehgal’s works may not be photographed or otherwise technically documented) to that of anti-object purism (to this day, there are no objects or even written documents purchased, collected or archived in connection with Sehgal’s work).”
Welcome to this Situation: Tino Sehgal in Berlin, On the occasion of his two surveys in Amsterdam and Berlin, two variations on Tino Sehgal, Jörg Heiser, first published in Issue 21, August 2015