This year, the work of Daniel Buren could be found casting colorful shapes of light against the lawns and through the windows of hotels in Italy, France, and Brazil. At art fairs from Dubai to Madrid, his prismatic and reflective sculptures please and dizzy the eye. Over the summer in Normandy, his signature colorful stripes were applied to sails of the Petite rade de Cherbourg exposition. In Paris, checkered windows in red, purple, and yellow filled the facade of Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche.
Almost all of Buren’s works are created “in situ”—conceived of, completed within, and forever linked to a specific place and time. There are clear clues to each work being by Buren—his use of bold color, pattern, shape, stripe, and his use of natural light to shine through, bounce off, or illuminate from within. The French artist famously has created since the 1960s without a studio, traveling from one exhibition site to the next to imagine a concept so specific to a place, it could never exist elsewhere, as he describes it. That energy and openness comes alive in each iteration, and is not without risk. Buren begrudgingly admitted to Whitewall, when we interviewed him in Paris at his recent solo show at Galerie Kamel Mennour, “Plis contre plan, hauts-reliefs, travaux situés” (September 12–November 23, 2023), that some exhibitions were complete improvisations. Buren spoke with us about being open to the beauty of an accident, as well as how to be prepared for what happens next.
WHITEWALL: Ninety percent of your works are in situ, with all of them installed with a set of specific rules that strictly correspond to the space in which they are shown. For your exhibition across two spaces at Kamel Mennour in Paris, where did you start?
DANIEL BUREN: For these two exhibitions, it is what I call “situated works.” When I use “in situ,” it means that these works are done in a context, a place, at a given time, from which moment it is absolutely impossible to have it elsewhere.
The place touches upon people, and architecture, and history, and whatever we want. It’s not always everything at once, and it is sometimes accentuated on such or such of element but that still means that it is placed within a place and for a time that is planned—generally quite short—after which we will never see it again. It is finished when it’s finished.
So works in situ, that’s the majority of what I do, even in private homes. And then there are works that I have started doing later, which I hence called “situated works” to the extent that it does have a certain materiality in things in situ.
Here it is an object, which, in a more traditional way, can be moved, at least according to a specific set of rules. We couldn’t move it randomly or put it in any given place, dispose it in any given manner, et cetera. However, we can move the object theoretically. Afterwards, you must apply the rules if you want to have it as it should be.

WW: And the rules are determined for each work? Each work has its set of distinct rules?
DB: There are things that are similar, but each piece has its own way of being presented, defined when the work exists, which can however change sometimes over the course of time.
The installation rules are always precise and remain attached to the work in question, especially if the work is no longer in my possession. What I mean is that when the work is in my possession I can change the rules as I like, but if it is given to someone or a museum, there are given rules from the start that are not going to alter. This is the difference between in situ and situated work.

Daniel Buren is Known for his In Situ Artworks
WW: You use the word “borrowed” to describe exhibiting in these spaces. Why the word “borrowed”?
DB: “Borrowed” is a term that, in fact, I discovered a very long time ago in Japan, where they use the term to indicate very specific things in their architecture, particularly gardens where, for example, they make a sort of a window or a frame, and this frame is placed some certain way in the garden, either nearby or very far, and the word means something akin to borrowing a landscape. And I found that this word was absolutely perfect. While we would say a framed landscape or something, I find that when we know the other word, our terminology seems pretentious and cold and a little ridiculous to think of us as able to frame a landscape.
And when we use the term “borrowed,” we are really in another relationship to things. So I have adopted this term to all of my “in situ” works, which are works that borrow things that were already there before the work came into being. In this case, the term really means borrowed. Just as when a boy borrows a bicycle, the bicycle is not his. He can use it as he can, but still it is not his.
I will very often use the word “work,” which is perhaps not brilliant, but it is the only one that I have found which does not immediately take words that have other meanings. A “work,” while it means a lot of things, is quite abstract in the end. A painting, sculpture, all these words of art, I think they are much more restrictive and, in addition to that, nine times out of ten, not correct at all. So I have eliminated the use of these words since the very beginning, and I often used instead the word “in situ” work, work in such place, et cetera.
If we take, for example, the work I did at the courtyard of the Palais-Royal I have nothing to do with. If we talk about what I did there, we can’t get the thing out of the Palais-Royal, it’s impossible. So the Palais-Royal, I have borrowed it, transformed it, and the work that I have completed there cannot be defined nor exist without it. So, in both cases, we are in front of a pair, an ensemble, where to take the possessive pronoun and call it “my work” would be both true and completely inaccurate, except if we can make the distinction.

WW: These works present a cascading series of prisms set against a mirror. Can you speak to the materials, shapes, and colors used? How were they chosen?
DB: These are types of work that I started on quite a long time ago, 30 years or so now, and on which I have come and gone, going into detail, and then coming back again, et cetera. The material is important; there is the folding. They are things in three dimensions, which work on the wall, and which are made with the same materials, the one at the bottom which reflects and the other which is folded. They are materials made of very light aluminum, which are folded in the precise way I want to fold them. They are detached from the wall in relation to their own space.
Then we see, well ourselves, both inside and outside, the architecture, et cetera, touching upon everything that is characteristic of so-called “in situ” works. But I think the term “situated work” is more accurate. They have a way of being presented which is set for each type of work. In general, very close to the ground or on the ground. For me, it’s important. It’s like the paintings that I did at the very beginning; their size was in relation to our body, at the same level, and we don’t have one thing dominating over the other. After that, the colors are chosen completely at random. That is to say that within the materials used, there are not a lot of colors to choose from. There are not millions of colors; I believe in fact that there are only thirty, which I really took at random, one after the other.
For example, this exhibition, the two exhibitions that take place simultaneously, was never conceived as an exhibition. Each time, the works themselves were conceived alone. Once I made the choice of what works were available, I realized that there were some of the shapes that were the same. There were never the same colors, though.
And so, if you mix the shapes that are different and the colors that are different, it makes a crowd of combinations. And so, I found myself with groups of colors. The most there were of the same shape was five, then four, then three, and one. And so, with that, I worked within the space. It comes to that moment when you hang pieces in a given space, which, obviously, would undoubtedly be completely different tomorrow if I retook part of the works. But let’s say that it ultimately creates a type of exhibition that is the exhibition, in this sense, which almost rejoins all the works I make, that is to say, you have elements on one side, with others that are fixed, and it is the interplay between the two that starts to take place which becomes more or less unique because a gallery of this form, with one opposite the other, does not exist, even if it’s approximated.

There is No Best Scenario for a Daniel Buren Work
WW: You’ve said that your work should give the viewer a lot of freedom. How do you like to give freedom to the viewer? When is that most successful?
DB: That’s easy to answer, in the sense that there is no answer. There is no best scenario. If there is something that appears, that is well placed within a given place, each time there is a precise relationship which means that it can be anything—the judgment of the moment, or the inspiration, or a stroke of good luck—that with each case, each situation, each time there is a precise relationship that states the way it should be.
WW: Can you tell us about your process working with light: whether outdoors, indoors with natural light through a window, or with electric light?
DB: So, the first thing I did when we opened the gallery, I played on the light emitting from the large bay windows, changing the light. I worked directly with the light already given in the space, knowing that it existed in a way that was sufficient enough inside both galleries, with the one opposite as well, even though slightly different being under a glass roof. Otherwise, the electric lighting is kept to a bare minimum, which is more than enough for me personally.
I had removed all the spots so there would be no light interference. It’s simple, having removed all the elements I don’t like—the spotlights that we see all the time—there is nothing to touch. Light is a very complicated thing once we go away from natural light. We don’t control it at all, and it’s generally clearly better than artificial light.

WW: And with movement? You’ve said that your work is never autonomous, that it needs to viewer to exist, to be activated. Using mirrored surfaces brings that a step further, making the viewer see themselves in the work. Is that what attracts you to using the mirror?
DB: The mirrors, which are actually the exception that confirm the rule, are generally always placed in such a way that the viewer doesn’t see themselves directly in it. And that’s the exception. Because if we are right opposite, which is quite usual for this kind of work, we’re going to see ourselves in fragmented pieces or in a particular way.
What interests me in the use of mirrors is above all the ability to create a third eye, so that every time there are mirrors, things will either become multiplied, which is logical enough, or transformed as we look and see what is going on in the group. In fact, it is often rearview mirrors. And so we expand physically, not only mentally, the angle of vision. We are not only extremely open at the start but eventually even more so because as we move, seeing pieces but never the whole.
And on top of that, we have this third eye that shows us what we have to our backs. And so what interests me the most with the use of mirrors is indeed this possibility of using it as a rearview mirror, which brings the ability to see in the same moment, front and back, and to the sides as well, but more precisely front and back. So, every time that I have used it, it was with this idea behind it.
Often, I will think back about the work where I made a huge mirror at the CAPC [Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux] where we never saw ourselves in the mirror, even though the mirror filled up the whole museum. But you couldn’t see yourself—it was impossible. It was at an angle where we had a view of the mirror, showing us all the architecture at I don’t know how many degrees, and we would see others, but never ourselves. Never. On the other hand, the architecture was entirely displaced, taking on the entire curve. It was not the first time I used the mirror, but it was probably the first time that I used it on such a large surface, 1,465 square meters.

WW: For your in situ works, you’ve described how you never have an idea first that you then retrofit into a site, but, rather, are inspired by the site, location, place, architecture, people who are involved, the history. How do you like to start with an in situ project?
DB: Oh yes, and this place can be, I have often said that between a toilet or the Palais-Royal, there is for me no distinction to be made. They are both as interesting to work with than 36 others. And, as for where I start, I’m going to have to answer stupidly and say that it really depends on the location. The fact that the work is never uprooted is common to all my in situ works, and while that is true, it doesn’t exactly say much.
For example, I have often said when people say to me: “Oh, yes, that plays very well with the architecture,” that yes, the architecture is indeed the thing that bangs us right in the head. So you have to deal with it. It’s almost always there, unless perhaps if you are working in the middle of the desert, which will pose other types of problems. But as soon as you are in a place, something I have always respected, only willing to work in places where there is culture, that is to say, a village, or a big town, a small town, fields that have been labored for three thousand years, et cetera. These are all possibilities, but the lost desert, the middle of the ocean, the summit of Annapurna, or I don’t know, et cetera, that is not for me. It doesn’t interest me at all to work in places such as these. I always must work in places that are used, at least which were used, let’s say, two thousand years ago. But it represents something that must exist.
When I first started my work a while ago now, at the same time there were all of those who started work in the deserts, and that I was completely opposed to. Not opposed to what they were doing, specifically, but to the fact that when we were talking about museum openings, et cetera, it seemed to me to completely overshadow it. I had written that at the time it was cultural tourism where you would have jeeps that bring you to see these installations that we know very well in the U.S. Well, why not? But it is really another state of mind. It was for me something that was, ideologically, completely elsewhere.

WW: But in fact, these works you mention are directly connected with nature, while you, on the other hand, prefer to be connected with a place that, as you say, is cultural.
DB: But there are only a very few places, except for precisely these mentioned, where you can actually say they are not places worked by man. There are a few places which are uninhabited, uninhabitable, I’m not sure, but which have never been habited, for example. Or moving places in the middle of the ocean which obviously have never been habited by men. That people could imagine doing things there, I don’t know why. It’s something I had decided at a given moment and on which I haven’t really changed. For me, a cultural place is the place in which we work, not solely a canvas or an image, and this is why the city interests me a lot. There, it is everywhere, culture and counterculture and life, et cetera. In the desert, apart from the scorpions, there is not even much life.
“For me, a cultural place is the place in which we work . . . and this is why the city interests me a lot”
Daniel Buren
WW: How has this applied to recent in situ projects like at Centre d’Art Contemporain d’Anglet, at Gare de Liège-Guillemins, and at Île d’Arz?
DB: It is difficult to answer in a general manner because the place, the people, and the architecture each bring a series of things. And that is what I believe I said at the very beginning, that is not always on the same level. It’s not always the architecture and then the people and then this and that. At times, it can be solely the encounter with, I don’t know, the people with whom you meet from the outset, perhaps those who have invited you if it’s a museum, where in the discussions, there can be something that comes to the surface. But I don’t really think the most important is one of these things. It is generally not just one alone; they combine. The one we see right away is often the one that is the most obvious, the architecture.
But at the same time, maybe what will happen, which does not escape architecture, will be the result of an accident, a conversation or something that was unimaginable before starting to work. And I stay very open to all these possible accidents. That’s why I really like working on the place, because the place is always rich in everything.
“I stay very open to all these possible accidents,”
Daniel Buren
Why Daniel Buren Works Without a Studio
WW: You famously are studio-less. That decision was made for economic reasons back in the sixties, but it’s a choice you’ve retained that seems significant to your process. Why do you think not having a studio has worked so well for you as an artist?
DB: I don’t want to compare, because comparing would be as if to say that it interests me, but to find oneself in your studio with your white canvases if, for instance, you make paintings, personally, I saw very quickly that was something that was limiting for me, which I tired of very quickly.
WW: You travel and live temporarily at each location around the world where you’re working on an in situ project. Can you tell us about that? Why have you always worked that way?
DB: To that, the things that we can decide and that we try to do or to maintain, they are going to have implications, implications that are really almost draconian. For example, when I decided to stop troubling myself over trying to find something that was literally unfindable in the late sixties, that is to say, a place to work, which in Paris (I am Parisian), was really at least as complicated as it is today, if not more so, and expensive, and difficult to find, et cetera. And which caused me to think that maybe I was taking things in reverse.
“Why does an artist have a studio?” I asked myself brutally. “Is it worth having a studio? And why do all artists have one? What does it mean? What is the advantage?” The best way to see it was, “I no longer have a studio, so what do I do?” There is no doubt that once you are there, the “What do I do?” from no longer having a studio, which is the first thing one does if one wants to do anything in visual arts, if that no longer exists, we are no longer in the same place. It is absolutely radical. And what is it we do? As a Parisian, what can I do now? I no longer have a place, I’m invited nowhere, so where am I going to be able to exercise the things I want to do?
“‘Why does an artist have a studio?’ I asked myself”
Daniel Buren
Well, the city is still there, as big as it is impractical. What does it oblige you to change permanently? Never would have I thought at the time that two or three or five years later, maximum, I wouldn’t have a studio to work in, and that that would have brought me to the essential side of having a place to work in which, today, 55 or 60 years later, has never happened. So it is a total rupture that forces you to do certain things, and that also prevents you from doing others, forever.

WW: Where are you headed next?
DB: The next destination? Well, as soon as the exhibition opens, the next day I have an appointment in Bordeaux. I come back and leave to do an exhibition in Brescia, Italy, about which I’m a little worried because I don’t know what I’m going to do. From time to time, I like to do improvisations. In galleries, it’s more possible than in museums, although I’ve done stuff in museums where I didn’t know what I would do 10 days beforehand. But I think that the people who are courageous are the ones who invite us. Because me, to put myself under a crazy amount of stress and say to myself, “Damn, if they only knew that I don’t even know what I’m going to do,” is something, but them, they don’t know at all what I’m going to do and they play the game, until the end.
But of course, that’s not always the case. There are some exhibitions where it takes time to make and prepare them, et cetera. To improvise is a luxury. It’s quite difficult, but it has some very interesting sides because of the speed and how everything is really a carrier of something; it doesn’t bother with things that are too sophisticated, that is certain. It’s another state of mind. But it’s not doable all the time, and this would be ridiculous anyway because it would be far too risky for things that are, not more important, but that cannot be envisaged by one alone. And you can’t consider, as some do in jazz, of improvising one hour of concert, or I don’t know what. And even in jazz, we say it’s improvisation, but it always lies on a basis, there’s already a lot of work and preparation that has gone into it.
“To improvise is a luxury,”
Daniel Buren
But to make an exhibition that is so vast you need people to help you as soon as you start. If you don’t have a minimum, then you’re no longer in improvisation, it’s impossible. People are going to become crazy and then you wouldn’t be able to work. If you do something on your own, then it’s okay. But that means that it’s going to be a gallery that is scaled down. We can control the effort that is needed. I don’t dare admit it, but I have done so many exhibitions that, obviously, there have been some of them that were complete improvisations.

Translation from the French by Ophelia Sanderson.