The Visitors

April 24th - June 1st.

The initiative Daniel Buren proposes in connection with the Visitor artist programme (artists invited to create projects in the sites best symbolizing the French capital) is installed at the Grand Palais - or rather at its threshold, where it entirely covers the Nave’s great glass façade, such that the public goes under it to reach the exhibition.

Comprised of a sheathing of transparent coloured adhesive sheets and opaque white adhesive stripes, the work covers the entire glassed surface measuring about 38 metres by 8 metres – all told, 300m2.
This two-dimensional piece was designed to let sunlight through, to project coloured shapes throughout the great Nave’s lobby; in this way the exhibition space is used as well to create a three-dimensional artwork, one in which visitors become part of its colour.

Daniel Buren

When has Daniel Buren never been a visitor? He has precociously associated his art with the notion of in situ, giving into protocole whereby its place and form cannot be defined in advance. It has a personal drive that is made up of the idea of adapting and creating responsive art. This flexibility and availability has driven him to play around with unstable and fragile objects such as flags and mirrors.

This supposed contradiction, in which Daniel Buren’s seemingly rigid forms are placed over more erratic and precarious elements, brings his work closer to classical age gardening, which was also attached to piecing together the most erratic forms and phenomena, by imposing improbable colours and above all form on them.

Born in 1938, in Boulogne-Billancourt, France
Lives and works in situ

www.danielburen.com