Tino Sehgal “Kiss” @ The Guggenheim
After all the snow in the city in February had melted I finally made it to see the show I wanted to see all month, on the last day, Tino Sehdal’s part theater – dance performance piece “Kiss”. As you enter the Guggenheim rotunda the first thing you see is a sign forbidding the taking of photographs. This is standard Sehgal practice. If you have ever wondered what the museum would look like without any art, this is your chance all the art has been cleared away yet the space isn’t empty. On the rotunda’s ground floor, a man and woman entwine in a changing, slow-motion amorous embrace. It begins when you walk a short way up the rotunda ramp. A child comes over to greet you. My greeter, a boy of 9 or 10, shook my hand and invited us to follow him and asked if he could ask me a question. “What is progress?” I gave a broad answer, then at his request, a clarifying example. We went further up the ramp. Soon we were joined by a young woman a teenager carefully and accurately our first guide paraphrased for her my response to his question and slipped away. I walked on with her, who commented on my comments on progress, which prompted me to try to refine my initial thoughts. About halfway up the rotunda, a man in his mid-30s and who introduced a new topic. As I had heard from others experiences it seems that we somehow missed a final pass off to someone who would end our journey up the ramp. Non the less the experience of this conversation would never be the same as those of the other visitors and their guides. The only traces that would remain would be remembered ideas. A similarly material-free version of art was, of course, introduced by 1960s Conceptualism.
At the end, after the guides had disappeared, I felt moved and refreshed in the way I sometimes feel when I’ve seen art in some very bare-bones way. It really is about life and communication with no answers. I was primed to go back for more but alas it was the last day and 5 pm at that.
“Tino Sehgal” was through March 10 at the Guggenheim Museum
