Daniel Buren - Exhibitions

Exhibitions

Buren had his first important solo exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan in 1968, where he blocked a glass door, the only entrance to the gallery, with a striped support. He has since installed his environmental installations worldwide. By the 1970s and 1980s he was exhibiting in Europe, America and Japan. Buren wished to take part in Harald Szeemann's exhibition "When Attitudes Become Form", in Bern in 1969, without being invited. Two of the contributing artists offered him space, but instead Buren set about covering billboards in the city with his stripes. He was arrested and had to hightail it out of Switzerland. In 1971, Buren devised a banner, 20 by 10 metres, with white and blue stripes on both sides to be hung at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in a big international group show, conceived to encourage artists to exploit the building's space. Other artists, including Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, protested that the banner blocked views across the rotunda, compromising their works. Buren, in turn, said Flavin's fluorescent lights colored his banner. The night before the opening the banner was removed. Buren was later invited to participate in the Documentas 5-7 (1972–1982).

In 1986 when François Mitterrand was President, he attained leading artist status after he created Les Deux Plateaux (1985–86), a work in situ for the Cour d'Honneur at the Palais Royal in Paris, Paris (see details above). That same year, he represented France at the Venice Biennale and won the Golden Lion Award for the best pavilion. Buren had major solo exhibitions at the Touko Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, in 1989, at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2002, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2005, at Modern Art Oxford in 2006, and at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in 2011. In December 2006 Buren won the competition to make Arcos Rojos / Arku Gorriaka, a new major project for the iconic 'Puente de La Salve' bridge next to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao while, in February 2007, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier re-opened with a new permanent commission. For the 52nd Venice Biennale Buren created a new site-specific work for the Giardini of the Italian Pavilion, and was curator of Sophie Calle's contribution to the French Pavilion. In 2011, he decided to cancel an exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing in "solidarity" with detained artist Ai Weiwei. The fifth artist ever to fill the space of the Grand Palais on the occasion of the Monumenta exhibition, Buren conceived Excentrique(s) in 2012, a giant cluster of colored, transparent plastic discs, which overlap to form a colourful canopy.