DANIEL BUREN

Born in Boulogne-Billancourt (Paris) in 1938, Daniel Buren lives and works in situ.

In the mid 60’s, Buren began to create paintings that radically questioned and explored the economy of the media used in his work and the relationship between background (support medium) and form (painting).

In 1965, when he was painting pictures that combined rounded forms and stripes varying in sizes and colours, he chose to use an industrial fabric with fixed vertical 8.7 cm-wide stripes alternating white with another colour. Beginning from this extremely simple and banal visual register, Buren further impoverished it by repeating it systematically to reach the grade of zero painting. This reflection will cause the observer’s attention to shift from the work to the physical and social environment within which the artist intervenes.

Eventually, he abandoned his studio in 1967, to favour work in situ, starting from the street, then the gallery, the museum, the landscape or the architecture.

His “visual tool” is based on the use of alternating stripes, which let him reveal the significant details of the site where he is working, by employing them in specific, and at times complex, structures lying somewhere between painting, sculpture and architecture.

His in-situ works play with points of view, spaces, colours, light, movement, the surrounding environment, angles or projections, acquiring their decorative force by radically transforming the sites.

Incisive, critical and engaged, Buren’s work is in a continual state of development and diversification, and never fails to stimulate comment, admiration and disagreement. In 1986, he realized his most controversial public commission, today classified as a "historical monument" Les Deux Plateaux (The Two Plateaus), for the Courtyard of Honour of the Royal Palace in Paris. In the same year, he represented France at the Venice Biennale, where he was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Pavilion.

Buren is one of the most active and acclaimed artists on the international art scene today, and his work has been shown in leading galleries and museums, and in a wide range of sites around the world.

In 2007, Daniel Buren received the Praemium Imperiale, awarded by the Emperor of Japan, a recognition which is widely regarded as the “Nobel Prize” for the Visual Arts.

Among his recent solo shows: De cualquier manera, trabajos in situ, Museo de Arte Italiano, Lima (2019), Like Child’s Play, Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia (2018); Quand le textile s’éclaire: Fibres optiques tissées. Travaux situés 2013-2014, Kunstsammlungen, Chemnitz, Germany (2018); Daniel Buren – Del medio círculo al círculo completo: un recorrido de color, Obras in situ, MAMBO – Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotà (2017), Proyecciones/Retroproyecciones. Trabajos in situ, Centre Pompidou Malaga, Spain (2017); L’Observatoire de la Lumière, travail in situ, Fondation Vuitton, Paris (2016); Daniel Buren. A Fresco, Bozar, Bruxelles (2016); Axer / Désaxer, work in situ, Madre, Naples, Italy (2015); Daniel Buren – Zwei Werke für Recklinghausen, Festspielhaus und Kunsthalle, Recklinghausen, Germany (2015); De un patio a otro: laberinto, trabajos in situ, Hospicio Cabañas, Guadalajara, Mexico (2014); Catch as Catch Can: works in situ, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom (2014). In the same year he signed the scenography of the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, by Ravel/Millepied at the Opéra Bastille, Paris.