That’s only one of the unique processes central to Sehgal’s art; among the others is how to sell it. (It’s easy to see his work as a statement against the commercial aspect of art, but he is happy to sell his intangible wares; his prices have been reported to be in the five figures.) The conversation that constitutes a Tino Sehgal sale consists of his talking to the buyer (usually a representative from a museum) about five legal stipulations of the purchase: that the work be installed only by someone whom Sehgal himself has authorized via training and prior collaboration; that the people enacting the piece be paid an agreed-upon minimum; that the work be shown over a minimum period of six weeks (in order to avoid seeming more like a theatrical event than an art exhibition); that the piece not be photographed; and that if the buyer resells the work, he does so with this same oral contract. “We discuss these clauses, and then at the end we repeat them and then we shake hands,” Sehgal explains matter-of-factly. For individual collectors, the conversation is slightly tweaked, since such buyers usually perform the works themselves after private instruction by Sehgal, which comes with the purchase. (When asked whether spending so much one-on-one time with individual buyers can become tedious, Sehgal concedes that it’s not such a problem, since “I don’t have that many of them.” He adds, “The people who are interested in my work—they’re quite far-out.” His gallery will say only that his art is in private collections in Europe and North America.)
Sehgal regularly stages his situations in museums; he relishes the unique opportunity to challenge the institutional worship of objects. “The museum is this place where objects are given amazing value, and it seemed interesting to go into this place and not do that,” says the artist, who has exhibited at the Tate Britain, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. “There’s a kind of reworking and reinterpreting of conventions, or setting up new conventions or taking them from a different angle. What people are convinced needs to be blue and only blue, I see as green.” And when it’s pointed out that some of his pieces can be seen as funny—pieces like This is so contemporary (2004), in which players disguised as museum guards suddenly begin dancing and singing, “Oh, this is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary!”—he is clearly pleased. “That’s the queerest thing about This is so contemporary; it’s like, even when they don’t like it, they laugh. It’s just kind of infectious, these people dancing around you. You somehow cannot not laugh,” Sehgal says before adding, “I take it as a compliment. I am happy that you say [my work can be humorous], but it’s not something I aim for.”
