Colors as if they were raining on the pillars of a temple flooded with sunlight. On the occasion of the Paris contemporary art fair which opens on Wednesday, the artist Daniel Buren, known for his white and black columns on the Place du Palais Royal, has transformed the Palais d’Iéna. The building, located near the Trocadéro, was a public works museum from 1939 to 1955 and today houses the Economic, Social and Environmental Council, the third assembly of the Republic.
Daniel Buren transformed his twenty gigantic bay windows into multi-colored stained glass, one of his favorite motifs. Flooded with sunshine on Tuesday, the colors are projected onto the immense interior pillars of a monumental space evoking a temple, in which the visitor walks. “The choice was to take, in this magnificent room, the series of windows which illuminate. The sun is on my side and it’s 100% of the work,” explained the 85-year-old artist to AFP, upon discovering the result.
The central space was entrusted to another artist, the Italian Michelangelo Pistoletto, who installed a series of white boxes, containing, like large open books, mirrors reflecting one in the other. The two artists “have in common a relationship with time and space, playing with the spectator as an activator and an integral part of the work,” explains Matthieu Lepoirier, art historian and curator of the work, to AFP. event, who wanted to bring them together on the occasion of the Paris modern and contemporary art fair by Art Basel. “At a time when everyone has their eyes glued to a computer or telephone screen, offering something that can only be approached through walking seems essential to me,” he adds.
The modern and contemporary art fair, Paris by Art Basel, a Swiss giant in the sector which took over the event in 2022, is being held at the ephemeral Grand Palais from Wednesday, pending the end of the restoration work on the Grand Palais in 2024, and from Friday to Sunday for the general public. More than 150 galleries from around thirty countries will be present.