Daniel Buren
Colors, Light, Projection, Shadows, Transparency: works in situ and situated
24 March–2 May 2015
Galeria Nara Roesler, Rio de Janeiro
Rua Redentor 241
Ipanema 22421-030
Rio de Janeiro RJ
Brazil
Hours: Monday–Friday 10am–7pm,
Saturday 11am–3pm
T +55 21 3591 0052
rio [at] nararoesler.com.br
Galeria Nara Roesler is proud to present Colors, Light, Projection, Shadows, Transparency: works in situ and situated, the first solo exhibition of Daniel Buren at the gallery. Known worldwide for his public interventions featuring his trademark white and colored stripes, after 14 years, the artist returns to Brazil with interventions and situated works created especially for the gallery space in Ipanema.
Daniel Buren graduated from the École des Métiers d’Art in 1960. In 1965 he abandoned painting, opting instead for a minimalism based on the restrained use of elements outlined by white and colored stripes. At first, he worked with off-the-shelf fabrics, which underscore the objective character of his works. Later on, he furthered his research by applying white and colored stripes onto myriad materials, eventually intervening onto large architectural spaces. Ceilings with cornice, walls, columns, and other elements had their presence displaced or highlighted by the pattern.
Although Buren’s stripes remained unchanged, the context in which they were shown became increasingly complex. During the 1980s, he printed his trademark feature onto columns, a new development that spawned iconic installations such as the striped black-and-white columns that have adorned the courtyard of Paris’s Palais Royal since 1986. The piece spurred debate on the implementation of contemporary artworks into historical buildings, such as the Louvre Pyramid, completed by architect Ieoh Ming Pei three years after Buren’s work.
In the early 2000s, he delved further into investigations on color, broadening his scope of patterns and employing various color stripes with no white interference. He also started using mirrors and transparencies to allow light to reflect and project color onto environments, as in the monumental installation Around the Corner presented in his solo show The Eye of the Storm, at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York (2005). Created especially for the museum’s central space, Around the Corner consisted of a tower of mirrored glass that spanned the entire height of the interior space, exposing the powerful presence of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed architecture. In 2012, Buren presented Excentrique(s), a work in situ made especially for Monumenta 12 at the Grand Palais. Employing blue and transparent acrylic tinted glasses to the skylight as well as numerous translucent discs throughout the rotunda, the piece allowed viewers to pass underneath, enhancing their perception of the building through color effects.
For Galeria Nara Roesler in Rio de Janeiro, in addition to creating situated works along the lines of his latest series, Buren will intervene on the gallery skylight to create his color-and-light games, whereby spectators will be able to experience their commonplace perception altering into a new, playful order.
About Daniel Buren
Daniel Buren (b. 1938, Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris) is widely considered to be France’s greatest living artist. He has exhibited in many of the world’s greatest museums including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Stedelijk Van Abbe Museum (Eindhoven), among others. He has shown at the Venice Biennale ten times (1972, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1986, 1993, 1997, 2003, 2007) and was awarded the Golden Lion of the best Pavilion (French) in 1986. In 2007, Buren received the Praemium Imperiale for Painting from Japan.
