Like no other artist of his generation, Daniel Buren – despite his harsh analysis of the art market’s ideology with its power structures as well as its myths of originality and authorship – has succeeded in becoming a well-tolerated, even an admired brand in that very art market. His criticism of art dealers, administrators and their institutions, their combined influence on the practice and understanding of art, and his analysis of the formation of the canon and development of art into commodity are tremendously efficient trademarks. In fact, a personal Buren style has evolved from the above.

In La Cabane éclatée luminescente, transparente et translucide we encounter an update of a series of works first conceived in 1975 and repeated since then with site-specific variations. While this is an architectural object within the exhibition’s architecture, it also clashes with it.

At the same time, the piece enables one to experience issues of perception. Freely translated into “exploded cabin,” La Cabane éclatée luminescente is particularly effective in form. Glowing in blue light, the symmetrical cube can be entered; its central pillar is constructed of a wooden frame covered in transparent white fabric. A moveable folding screen in front of the cube prevents us from looking directly into it. Reminiscent of a stage curtain or a repoussoir, this evokes reflections on subjects such as figure and background, the viewer’s vantage point and perspective. Black stripes within attached to the wooden frame recall one of Buren’s past projects, derived from painting, in which he attempted to create a model about the general conditions ruling the perception of art by means of cheaply-produced “Strip Paintings.”

Born in 1938, Buren has brought pragmatism and conceptual stamina to his finely articulated oeuvre. Starting from a rigid analysis of the formal and contextual conditions of “painting” as a medium, he went on to investigate the art system itself.