Daniel Buren
(an article by Dr. Elisa Martelli)
Daniel Buren was born 84 years ago in Boulogne Billancourt, a town southwest of Paris. He studied in the capital at the École Nationale Supérieure des Métiers d’art and the École des Beaux-arts. In the 1960s he decided to make use of 8.7 cm strips of colour, rigorously alternating with white at regular intervals as his medium of expression, whilst working with various tools using different types of media.
Since the 1980s his works have become monumental with permanent and temporary installations that interact with railway stations, historic buildings, and natural and urban landscapes, managing to reinterpret and give a welcoming feel to the places that he has worked on.
For Documenta 2012, Buren is confronted with the Grand Palais in Paris, which immediately impresses him with the light and the vastness of the iron and glass structure, giving the impression of being outdoors while remaining inside. The visitor is led in through a door on the north side, where a corridor of semi-darkness has been created, revealing a surface of colorful circles made of light, flexible plastic film discs supported by metal rods. The 377 circles are composed of only four colors: blue, yellow, red-orange, and green, arranged in the alphabetical order of their names (blue, jaune, rouge-orange, vert) so that each circle is repeated almost in the same proportion. This creates a multicolored carpet almost 3 meters high, a luminous forest that does not hide the architecture of the Palais, but modifies it thanks to the transparency of the material and its alternating arrangement. To complete the work, one comes under the blue glass dome of the building itself, itself a huge coloured circle that projects its light on mirrors placed on the floor and on which visitors can walk. The enjoyment of this work entitled EXCENTRIQUE(S) work in situ depends on the weather conditions, the different times of day, the number of visitors, and their interaction with the installation itself.
By adding” in situ” in the title of the work, the artist wanted to emphasize the interrelationship between artistic intervention and the exhibition site, as he had already done something similar at Ama Castle in 2001. “There is a way of touching in the place, not the things that are not seen but to reinforce something that is already seen […]. creating a paradox where you build an obstacle and this obstacle, gives more,” was how Buren talked about this work, describing how it should be experienced, this being permanent (or almost, what is permanent today?). Mirrors, steel, marble, stone, and concrete create a backdrop that conceals the Chianti landscape, revealing it and the multiple artistic visual games enhance it. On the Vineyards: points of view, work in situ, shows us a Chianti landscape familiar to us and at the same time projects us inside the work thanks to its mirrored surfaces. Here the work comes to life precisely because of the space in which it is inscribed while delighting in this fortunate relationship between work and place and observing a difference every time. To quote Heraclitus, “We go down and we do not go down in the same river, we are and we are not.”
Dr. Elisa Martelli
