ABOVE: some of Tino Sehgal’s “interpreters” doing Sehgal’s work This is so contemporary in a gallery space, with Thomas Scheibitz’s Untitled in the background.

This is another one of those “artists say the darndest things” stories from the Times Online, about Tino Sehgal, who is selling individual words to art buyers out of the bookstore at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. You pay £25 and the shopkeeper will whisper the word in your ear; it is one of 100 words in a complete paragraph composed by Sehgal. Five people have apparently stepped up so far to buy a word, so this doesn’t sound like something that will be replicated at your local Wal-Mart any time soon (although doing so is likely the only way you’d ever catch us dead inside one).

Sehgal’s specialty is selling nothing: his work, according to the ICA, “does not produce tangible objects or any form of material trace.” Instead, he composes situations for gallerygoers. In This is so contemporary, for instance, which displayed at the Venice Biennale last year, Sehgal’s gallery assistants surrounded each visitor and chanted “This is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary” to them. The Tate has recently acquired one of Sehgal’s 2002 works, (dating such work seems problematic, no?) This is propaganda, late last year, for what the Times calls a “five-figure” price. The piece requires a woman dressed as a gallery assistant to turn to the wall whenever a visitor enters and sing “This is propaganda, you know, you know” twice. The Tate catalogue entry says, as you might expect, “online image not currently available.” Let us know, will you?

LINK: Times Online > Psst, wanna buy a word of art?