The exhibition
EL GRECO / TINO SEHGAL
7 OCTOBER 2023 – FEBRUARY 2024
Centro Botín will present an exhibition of Tino Sehgal practice in dialogue with El Greco’s seminal painting Adoration of the Shepherds (1577-1579), originally realized for the Capilla de Santo Domingo del Antiguo, Toledo.
Sehgal’s works, which he calls “constructed situations“ are always enacted by people rather than consisting of material objects. In this way, the artist radically defies the traditional context of museum and gallery environments as visitors are invited to be a part of the artwork instead of being passive spectators. The resulting situations are immaterial and fleeting, what truly matters is the viewer’s experience created by the artist.
At the heart of El Greco/Tino Sehgal is the questioning of art’s relevance to society in terms of spiritual and religious values up until today. How does the divine ray of light in El Greco’s painting shape Sehgal’s development of a work that is not an object but a “situation“? How are El Greco’s depicted mannerisms transformed by a contemporary work of art? Does it matter how old a work of art is in order to be contemporary at any given time, even in the future?
Curator: Udo Kittelmann, Curator and member of the Fundación Botín’s Art Advisory Committee.
Image:
El Greco, Adoración de los Pastores, 1577-1579. Fundación Botín’s collection.
Tino Sehgal (born London, 1976) is of German and Indian descent and based in Berlin. He has exhibited extensively worldwide. Among his institutional exhibitions are: Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Tate Turbine Hall, London; Ullens Center Beijing; Pinacoteca, Sao Paulo; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt. In 2013 Tino Sehgal was awarded the Golden Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale.
