London born German artist of Indian origin, Tino Sehgal, is popularly described as the “sculptor of ephemeral forms” because his artworks or installations are characterised by movement and encounter arising between the audience and the interpreter of the piece. Therefore, his work of art will exist only in the world of experience and memory of those who directly see it and experience it. The essence of Sehgal’s artwork is to produce something, which is not made up of material. As a consequence, there is no recording of his artwork in images or videos.

Wolfgang Laib is a German conceptual artist whose connection with India dates back to early 1960s when he visited India with his parents as a teenager. Laib, who calls India his second home, speaks Tamil and Sanskrit with ease and has a deep understanding of Indian culture and philosophy. Trained to be a doctor, Laib credits his parents, who had much to do with his choice of career and aesthetic leanings. His parents chose to live in Ulakampatti, a village near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, and Laib later opened a studio in the village from where much of his art works in black granite stones are made. Laib’s material for his art is completely natural. Laib creates installations using collected pollen, beeswax and other organic material. According to Laib, his art reflects on the relation of nature and humankind acting within its vast sphere.

Art works by Laib and Sehgal are part of the celebrations planned for 60-years of Indo-German diplomatic relations. While it is for the first time Sehgal’s art is coming to India, Laib has been to India in 1985 for a show in Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai. Max Mueller Bhavan brought Sehgal’s This Situation to Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. Sehgal describes his work as “a discursive coming-out” or a “kind of playful salon and a painting of the history of our time”.

As visitors entered Gallery Chatterjee and Lal in Colaba, Mumbai, where his art was showcased, they are confronted by a group of six people dressed in ordinary clothes, deep in a discussion on philosophical issues. Sehgal calls them “interpreters”. They were greeted with the words, “Welcome to this situation!” The players subsequently change their positions with slow movements and quote a hypothesis from 450 years of intellectual history without naming authors. And the visitors do manage to identify a few authors. “Many of the quotations used to initiate the discussion reflect the transition from a society of scarcity to one of plenty, or the possibilities of exerting a formative influence on oneself or in one’s relationships with others,” said Sehgal.

Sehgal questions the material-intensive production processes of the western art and proposes responsible alternatives. His works exist solely through oral transmission and in the memory of those who have seen them.

“While visual art proposes that we can extract material from natural resources to then transform it and have a product that is there to endure, dance transforms actions to obtain a product or artwork and produces and reproduces this product at the same time,” he said.

Laib’s exhibition is called “Passageway” and it is now on display at Gallery Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai. Though Laib is trained to be a doctor with his final medical thesis on hygiene of drinking in South Indian villages, he said he never wanted to work as a doctor. However, he said he never changed his profession, as both art and medicine are the science of life. “Medicine is about physical existence, while art is a natural science. It is an extension of life that questions the conformity of physical existence. Life is beyond your physical form,” he said. He is influenced by Indian philosophy, which according to him does not consider the importance of the individual. “I am not the creator; I have learnt that from Indian philosophy and culture that individual is not important which I find very beautiful as against the West’s philosophy of individual being important,” he said.