A conference-debate with Georges Verney-Carron, Bernard Collet, and Mohamed Rachidi at the French Institute of Tangier will present the artist Daniel Buren, known for his work on white and coloured vertical stripes.
At the moment, Daniel Buren is present with a gigantic installation, "Excentrique (s) for Monumenta 2012", at the Grand Palais in Paris. After Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra, Christian Boltanski, and Anish Kapoor, Daniel Buren has taken over the nave to play with colours and light, by day as by night. Likewise, he is settling in for the first time and in an exceptional way in Morocco.
Four of his works are exhibited at the Delacroix Gallery in Tangier. One immediately recognises the pictorial identity of the artist. The "visual tool" consisting of alternating stripes 8.7 cm wide is declined here on a high-technology material woven with optical fibres that light up when light passes through them. Georges Verney-Carron, gallery owner and long-time friend of Daniel Buren, explains the originality of the latter's artistic work, relying on the projection of interviews with Daniel Buren. "Daniel Buren's work is essentially in situ, that is to say, implanted in the urban landscape.
His urban constructions, by vocation, do not move," he declares. "We have here the chance to show the rare testimonies of the artist's work that can travel.
Buren personally followed the manufacture of these four works and he allows us today to present them." Bernard Collet, curator of the exhibition, and Mohamed Rachidi, art critic, will dialogue with Daniel Buren to give the Tangier public present at the exhibition on Friday, 15 June, at the Delacroix Gallery the opportunity to discover one of the most renowned artists of our time. The director of the French Institute of Tangier, Alexandre Pajon, will present to the intellectuals and artists present at the exhibition the speakers who have come from France and Morocco during the conference-debate during the evening of the same day.
Journey of an atypical artist
Daniel Buren was born in 1938. He lives and works in Paris. He is today one of the most recognised contemporary French painters in the world.
With painters Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni, he created the BMTP group in 1966, which was exhibited by the Paris Biennale. Linked by a common practice of systematic repetition of the same motif and the desire to oppose radically the artistic scene of the time dominated by the School of Paris, they separated in December 1967.
The 80s marked the era of the first public commissions. The most famous: "The Two Plateaus" (1985-1986) was commissioned by the French State for the Cour d'honneur of the Palais Royal in Paris. The national controversy generated by the "columns" and the obtaining of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1986 consecrated his notoriety.
He has since continued to work on increasingly complex architectural devices, multiplying the games with materials and colours and becoming increasingly interested in the links between architecture and art. Daniel Buren creates hundreds of "in situ" works all over the world that highlight, thwart, or enhance the characteristics of the places that host him.
