Trading Paint for Light
Daniel Buren has spent more than 60 years working with one thing: a vertical stripe, 8.7 centimeters wide, white alternating with color. He first spotted the pattern on a bolt of ordinary striped fabric in the mid-1960s, and it has been central to his work ever since. Buren has called the stripe “an invariable sign” in a world that never stops changing — a fixed point for looking at everything else.
You’ll find his signature stripes in galleries, museums and streets all over the world, most famously on the black-and-white cylindrical columns at the Palais Royal in Paris. This show brings together pieces from the 1960s and 1980s alongside more recent ones from the 2010s. The former includes “Peinture aux Formes Variables” (1966), made not long after Buren found his striped material. The recent pieces trade paint for light — cloth woven with optical fiber and LEDs, made with manufacturers in Lyon, a city known for textiles.
*Please note that some exhibits will be changed during the course of this exhibition. During the first half of the exhibition period, the series Fibres Optiques (2013), composed of optical fiber incorporating LEDs, will be on display. In the second half, the rare 6.5-hour film Beyond Time, as Far as the Eye Can See (2018) will be screened.
