Curated by Jens Hoffmann
Jens Hoffmann recently relocated to San Francisco from London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, where he intrepidly devoted three solo exhibitions to Tino Sehgal. No prizes for guessing what opens this month at the CCA Wattis—a Tino Sehgal show. This “permanent,” gradually unfolding retrospective will include every piece made by the German Conceptualist since 2000, when he began hiring nonprofessional actors to aid in the creation of dematerialized situations, such as one in which an invigilator falls to the floor and burbles an exhibition’s press release (This Exhibition, 2004). His first US solo outing (the second opens in December at the Walker Art Center) will provide an opportunity to catch up with a precocious artist whose work demands firsthand experience and invariably prompts a love/hate relationship. The question is whether an indefinite display of Sehgal’s oeuvre, one piece at a time, will produce overkill or apotheosis.
