Daniel Buren

The Tappeto volante (Flying Carpet) consists of 1536 cubic Plexiglas lanterns, coloured in red or blue alternating with white, in the 8.7 cm strips that characterise all of Daniel Buren’s works, regardless of their size and location. In past editions of Luci d’Artista, Tappeto volante had been set up in other location of the city centre, and on the occasion of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, it was modified by substituting green for blue to celebrate the colours of the Italian flag.  

Since 1965, Daniel Buren (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1938), has abandoned traditional painting techniques to devote himself to minimalist and conceptual style. Since then, he has used the strip: a deliberately banal and anonymous sign that avoids subjective elements and takes on the form of a radical act: a “visual tool” that allows the observer to focus not only on the object, but on the relationship it has with the place that hosts it. The work thus becomes a sign of attention to the context. 

Daniel Buren is one of the most internationally acclaimed contemporary artists, already awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 1986. His rigorous research is developed in different media and on an environmental scale with interventions in public space and permanent works such as the installation in the court of honour of the Palais Royal in Paris, with 260 octagonal columns that extend underground or, in Piedmont, the 126 floating flags that dialogue with the landscape from the terraces of the Zegna Foundation in Trivero, near Biella. His works are in the collections of the world’s most important museums.  

In 2007 he received the Praemium Imperiale for Painting from the Japan Art Association and in 2024 the Premio Internacional de Mecenazgo awarded by the Callia Foundation of Spain.  

Some of France's major institutions such as Palais de Tokyo, Centre George Pompidou and Fondation Vuitton are venues for his interventions and Daniel Buren's numerous solo exhibitions in Italy and internationally include: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (1976); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands (1976); PAC - Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan (1979); Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, Detroit, USA (1981); Brooklyn Art Museum, New York, USA (1988); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (1995); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA (2003); Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2005); Madre, Naples (2015).  

Silvia Maria Sara Cammarata