Daniel Buren (born 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt) began in the late 1960s to shape the public space with his demonstrative absence of a studio in the form of his posters, the Affichage sauvages. His alternating white and colored, 8.7 cm wide vertical stripes have become a kind of trademark. These strips serve him to this day as a visual tool. In their form they are deliberately banal, content-free and meaningless. Consequently they are opposed to the belief of the autonomy of the artwork, and refer the viewer first and foremost to the place of installation. In so doing, the concept artist Buren occupied a new field of art, which expresses itself exclusively in this minimalist character.
Daniel Buren developed for the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden a series of site-specific interventions that deal with the neo-classical exhibition house of Hermann Billing. Playing with color, mirrors and shadows, he creates stunning installations. High internal walls structure the rooms in a completely new way and change the effect of the architecture significantly. The Coffee Shop in the Kunsthalle undergoes a radical new design that will be maintained even after the exhibition has closed.
Daniel Buren also expands the issue of space in the city of Baden-Baden. With over one hundred of the artist-designed banners, the swanky resort is transformed into a work of art, whose center is the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden.
The extensive catalog, edited by Karola Kraus and Cora von Pape, is published by the bookstore Walther König Köln (200 pages, German / French), and with nearly 150 works from five decades, systematically describes the different processes of the artist in dealing with the room for discussion in essays by Karola Kraus, Doris Krystof and Cora von Pape.
12– 22.05.2011
Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Lichtentaler Allee 8A, 76530 Baden-Baden
