Outset Netherlands was proud to support 'This is so contemporary', taking place in April 2015, as part of Tino Sehgal's A year at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Conceived as a consecutive series of twelve presentations, the exhibition featured different works from Sehgal’s oeuvre each month, enacted in different gallery spaces. The survey built up in intensity over time. In the months after January, the scale of the works gradually increased, culminating in the summer in ‘situations’ involving a larger number of participants. As summer turned to fall, the works returned to a smaller scale, ending in December.
Sehgal created ‘situations’ within the museum space, in which interpreters enacted choreographed actions and occasionally conversed with visitors. These encounters offered the visitor a unique experience of live artwork. Sehgal’s twelve-part survey was not only a prelude to a fresh approach to using the building under the new directorship but also an innovative re-envisioning of the exhibition as a phenomenon.
Beatrix Ruf commented: "I am truly proud to be able to realize a project that presents one of the most radical artists of this era. Sehgal thinks about how to continue conceptual art, which has such a long history in the Stedelijk, extending this field beyond the material into the experience of space and time. It is exciting to work together on how Tino Sehgal’s sharp artistic statements in and for art can be presented in a survey exhibition, which has never been done before. This one-year project will challenge our concepts in how live situations in the context of a collection display define presence and how an overview of this particular oeuvre is constructed in the sequence of presentations."
ON VIEW: 1st January - 31st December 2015
Tino Sehgal (1976), who originally studied political economics and dance, crossed over to the visual arts in 2000. He achieved international renown for his groundbreaking, experimental work presented at the Venice Biennale, the Documenta in Kassel, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Tate Modern in London. The Stedelijk has worked with Sehgal from the outset of his career, presenting his work in 2004 and 2006; the museum acquired his first work in 2005: Instead of allowing something to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things (2000).
