Xavier Hufkens is presenting an exhibition of new work by Daniel Buren. The exhibition comprises a series of high wall reliefs in which the artist combines his visual tool (the alternating stripes) with two other important elements in his work (colour and mirrors) to create works that enter into a dialogue with the space, with each other and with the viewer.
Géométries colorées [Coloured Geometries] is the first exhibition that Buren has conceived for the Rivoli space. This is important to note as it is not the artworks per se that are the subject of the exhibition but their relation with the space in which they are situated. And for the artist, this is both a physical reality i.e. the architecture (in this instance, the double-height void, clean contemporary lines and tight volumetrics) and a set of ever-changing conditions (light, atmosphere, people, even principles and ideologies). Buren’s high reliefs – dazzling three-dimensional assemblages of powder-coated coloured aluminium, mirrors and the artist’s trademark stripes – can be seen as devices that both challenge and reveal the physical and intangible qualities of the site. The mirrored surfaces not only capture the surrounding space, which then becomes part of the artwork, but also reflect it back and forth from work to work, thus creating a doubling and redoubling effect, ad infinitum. For all their rigid geometry, systematic construction and use of ‘hard’ industrial materials, the reliefs are far from static: they are responsive, mutable and constantly changing according to the circumstances presented.
VR Sunil Gohil
