Poster

“The lines are the result of a natural process that began around 1964, when I painted abstract works featuring large vertical stripes. In the autumn of 1965, in a Paris market, I accidentally found striped cotton fabric, the one used to make pillows and mattresses, similar to the awnings of the terraces of cafes and restaurants. I was immediately attracted to that material, perhaps because it resembled the paintings I had been creating for over a year. I bought many meters of fabric, which had vertical bands 8.7 centimeters wide, and started working on it”.

To transform and redefine the space through the work of art which in turn, thanks to the space in which it is immersed, takes on a form and an identity: this is Daniel Buren’s distinctive trait. As inventor of the term in situ, Buren intervenes on the exhibition space, modifies it and gives it new value, exploring in depth the dialectic between the work and its context, between the artist and his audience.

“The phrase “works in situ”, understood as I intend it, could be translated as:”transformation of the place” achieved through various operations, including the use of my visual tool. “In situ”, to me, means that there is a deliberately accepted intrinsic link between the place and the “work” that takes place there, that is presented there, that is exhibited there”.

He studied at the École des Métiers d’Art and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and over the course of his long career, he has received many awards and prizes, including the Leone d’Oro at the 1986 Venice Biennale and the Praemium Imperiale for painting of the Japan Art Foundation, in 2007. Buren is one of the most influential exponents of the historical reflection on institutions developed between the sixties and seventies and called Institutional Critique. Since the middle of the 1960s, Buren has based his research and his production on a striped awning fabric, alternating white and colored, with a standard stripe which is 8.7 cm. wide.
His first solo show at the Apollinaire Gallery in Milan, in 1968, was followed by the debated participation in the 5th International Exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York, in 1971, and in the Documenta V curated by Szeemann in 1972, which affirmed his prestige in the context of Conceptual Art. Since the 1980s, Buren has progressively combined the creation of museum-like works with architectural installations in public spaces. After his participation in some of the most important exhibitions of recent decades, there are countless permanent works that testify to his research: among these, the spectacular Les Deux Plateaux (1985-1986) in the Court of Honor of the Palais-Royal in Paris ; Sens dessus Dessous (1994), at the Parc des Célestins in Lyon; 25 Porticos: The Color and its Reflections (1996), Tokyo; Sulle vigne: punti di vista, (On the vineyards: viewpoints), at the Castello di Ama, Gaiole in Chianti (2001); Puente de la Salve, on the homonymous bridge adjacent to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (2007).