Daniel Buren: Going for a Walk in a Zigzag

For EMMA, Buren has created an enormous new work Les Paravents consisting of countless folding screens, inviting visitors to take a walk through the zigzagging maze. In this site-specific piece, the screens embody Buren’s signature themes of impermanence and mutability.

Daniel Buren is a giant in the field of contemporary art, with a career spanning over 60 years and more than 3000 site-specific exhibitions around the world. He is famous for his practice of using 8.7 cm-wide vertical stripes as a visual tool to reveal hidden aspects of familiar spaces.

The exhibition will also spill outside the walls of the museum with a line-up of open-air events and interventions. A week before the opening, Buren’s signature vertical stripes enlivened Helsinki’s and Espoo’s winter landscape on over 300 JCDecaux billboards across the two cities.

Also featured is Ployer/Déployer, an open-air piece of 105 striped flags to fill Espoo’s Tapionaukio square in May. Buren’s famous stripes will additionally appear on the sails of optimist dinghies competing in a regatta on Nuottaniemi Bay in a piece called Sail/Canvas – Canvas/Sail (Voile/Toile – Toile/Voile), organised in collaboration with the Espoo Pursiseura Yacht Club EPS.

Striped vests will transform the museum’s customer service personnel into a living part of a work called Vests (Essai hétéroclite: Les Gilets, travail situé). The personnel will wear striped vests throughout the duration of the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Arja Miller in collaboration with the Director of the Danish art agency Creator Projects, Simon Friese.