Like no other artist of his generation, Berliner Tino Sehgal represents a radical redefinition of art and its experience. Sehgal constructs situations rather than material objects. His media are the human voice, physical movements and social interaction that are initiated and enacted by the interpreters of the work who address visitors through conversation, song and choreography. Although Sehgal’s works never materialise in the form of an object, they conform to all the conventions of exhibition art: they are present throughout the institution’s opening hours and are bought and sold like conventional material artworks and are as well included in museum collections and private collections.

This practice produces a fundamentally new understanding of the work of art that can have both a lasting value as well as an intense and sustained impact on a given space.

Following the exhibition of Sehgal’s works worldwide over the last 10 years in the most diverse range of museums and exhibition centres (including the already legendary presentations at New York’s Guggenheim Museum and in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London), his first major solo exhibition will take place in Berlin this summer.

Sehgal’s work evolved during the 1990s and early 2000s under the influence of interdisciplinary practices from Berlin’s dance, theatre and art scenes. This unique artistic environment established a particularly distinctive union between the live event and a high art ambition at locations such as the Podewil or the Hebbel-Theater among many other institutions. Tino Sehgal will be presenting a mise-en-scene consisting of five sculptural situations on the ground floor of the Martin-Gropius-Bau.

Tino Sehgal was born in London in 1976 and studied economics and dance in Berlin and Essen. His work has been frequently exhibited in Europe and North and South America, as well as in Asia. He took part in the Venice Biennal in 2003 and 2005 (German pavilion along with Thomas Scheibitz). He took part in the 2006 Berlin Biennale, the 2008 Yokohama Triennale and the 2010 Gwangju Biennale. In 2012 his work was exhibited at the documenta in Kassel. In 2013 he was awarded the Golden Lion for best artist at the 55th Venice Biennale.