Daniel Buren: Plis contre plan, hauts-reliefs, travaux situés

This is Daniel Buren’s first solo exhibition in Paris since his ‘simultaneous’ project with Philippe Parreno in 20211 and in 2017, when he devised ‘Pyramidal. Hauts-reliefs, travaux in situ et situés’ [‘Pyramidal. High reliefs, situated and in situ works’].

For this new project, Plis contre plan, the artist has ‘borrowed’ two of the gallery’s four spaces to display a set of works never previously exhibited in France. They comprise around twenty pieces created between 2021 and 2023. By ‘borrowing’ these spaces, as he puts it, he will transform them and ‘present them in a different light’. The Plis contre plan are a variation within the series of works in relief. These ‘variations’, like Monet’s series, are works that share common principles, and are avenues opened up, explored and then closed off by the artist. Here, a succession of prisms, cascading one after the other or alternating with the support, are set against a plane consisting of a 217.5-cm square mirror divided into a notional grid of 25 equal squares. Each piece is unique, with its own arrangement of relief and colour. Daniel Buren has painted each piece in bright, bold, cheerful colours which, alert to the ‘surprise factor’, he chose at random from a range provided by the manufacturer.