From April 2 to May 11, 2024, works by Daniel Buren, in collaboration with Mennour, were set in dialogue with Theoreme’s pieces of design with the backdrop of the Jardin du Palais Royal.
Daniel Buren, has devoted most of his career to questioning the essence of painting as well as, later on, the different contexts in which works are exhibited. His quest for the level zero of painting, which started in the 1960s, continued late 1967/68 with the Buren-Mosset-Parmentier- Toroni association, whose aim was to react against the myth of ‘subjective inspiration’ in art, and the school of Paris in particular. For Buren, this ‘deskill-ing strategy’ translates into the systematic use of industrially made fabrics, covered with 8.7cm-wide colored and white stripes. The alternating stripes become the stable element in his subsequent works – which he uses as a visual tool that brings to light the role played by galleries and museums, as well as by their architecture, in the creation of art status and value. His in situ or situated works cover museum walls, pedestals, staircases, and doors. They reach out into the urban fabric, projecting through the win- dow of a commercial gallery space or hanging on a street, are pasted onto billboards in Paris metro stations or displayed by sandwich-men. Rather than being framed, Buren’s works take over, reframe the art institutions themselves and ask if art ceases to be genuine when placed in the context of everyday life.
Beyond the institutional critique he champions, Buren also aims at engineering an undeniable visual pleasure. And the fact of the matter is that through his flags, colored panels and mirrors, as well as the multiplication of shapes and underpinning surfaces, Buren composes a deployment of color which brings the viewer closer to the quintessence of art.
