The work cannot be seen, nor understood, nor grasped on its own terms, it is only in-relation-to, and hence indefinitely redefined
— Daniel Buren
Daniel Buren (b. 1938, Boulogne-Billancourt) began his career as a painter before developing, in the mid-1960s, the 8.7 cm vertical stripe that would become the fundamental tool of his practice. Adopting this reduced visual vocabulary allowed Buren to shift attention away from the art object and toward the conditions that shape its presentation. His striped works function as a device for examining how art relates to its architectural, social, and institutional contexts—a position he has continued to elaborate through in situ installations, public commissions, and critical writings for more than six decades.
Buren’s practice has had a lasting influence on subsequent generations of artists, particularly in the fields of institutional critique, conceptual art, and site-specific installation. He remains active today, continuing to develop new projects and to engage closely with the work of his contemporaries.
He represented France at the Venice Biennale, where he received the Golden Lion for Best Pavilion (1986), and has been recognized with the Praemium Imperiale (2007) and other major distinctions. His work has been the subject of significant exhibitions at institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. He held his first solo exhibition with Konrad Fischer Galerie in Düsseldorf in 1969. Group exhibitions have included major presentations at MoMA, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and the Grand Palais, Paris.
Buren’s works are held in leading public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Guggenheim Bilbao; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Vancouver Art Gallery.