Until June 14, 2023, Galleria Continua in Dubai is hosting L’Horizon, Infiniment, travaux in situ et situés (The infinite horizon, in situ and situated), a solo exhibition by internationally famous French artist Daniel Buren. It displays his two series of high reliefs from 2019, Croix and Prismes et Miroirs. With the help of his artworks, Buren has transformed the exhibition space into an immersive environment, creating a dialogue with the architecture and the landscape.
The “Croix 1” work consists of prisms arranged in the X shape on mirrors. The prisms’ surfaces visible from the front are painted black (the upper part) and orange or green (the lower part). On the two lateral sides, there are Buren’s famous vertical stripes, his “visual tool” for revealing the space in which the artworks unfold. Looking at the vertical bands which underline a relief, our eye begins to follow the movement into every corner and on every surface, so this way, we learn to observe the surrounding space. The reflections created by the mirrors in the high reliefs also highlight another crucial point of Buren’s art: the absence of a single point of view.
What makes the high reliefs unique is their mobility. Daniel Buren defines them as “situated works” which feed on their environment but can be rethought in other places, while in situ works are actually inseparable from a space: they must be designed, created, and displayed in and for a specific place.
Designed with the architecture of the space in mind, the work in situ entirely made of mirrors invites viewers’ imagination to wander and allows them to turn on their “third eye”, as the artist says. It shows what is behind us and what is usually invisible to us. During the day, the artwork unfolding in the architecture changes with each sunray and each effect of light: the symbiosis between the work and its environment is complete.
About the artist
Daniel Buren (born in 1938, Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France) is a world-famous painter, sculptor and installation artist who resides in Paris. In 1960, he graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art. In 1965, Buren received Prix Lefranc de la Jeune Peinture (France), a prize for young painters, and in 1986, he was awarded the Golden Lion for best pavilion at the 42nd Biennale in Venice, Italy. Among his other awards are the Praemium Imperiale for Painting from Japan; Living Treasure prize, New Zealand; International Award for Best Artist, The Bad Wurtemberg Land, Stuttgart, Germany; and Prize for finest parking lot in Europe received in Budapest, Hungary.
Belonging to the Conceptual Art movement, in his art Daniel Buren questions the art nature and challenges conventional assumptions about the museum space; he explores how art, museums, and audiences relate to each other. In 1965, the artist started working with the striped fabric; it has become the signature feature of his visual language. Buren uses his colourful in situ installations, which respond to their environment, to draw attention to often unnoticed formal, political, economic, and ideological characteristics of a specific site.
Buren has his artworks featured in numerous exhibitions including Museo de Arte Italiano, Lima, Peru (2019); Carriageworks, Redfern, Australia (2018); Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany (2017); BOZAR Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium (2016); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2014); Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France (2014); Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2013); and many others.
To learn more about L’Horizon, Infiniment, travaux in situ et situés, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
You might be interested in visiting Raise Vibration at Infinity des Lumières.
