Daniel Buren
Aux Beaux Carrés: travaux in situ (Act II)
29 June—15 August 2024
Installation at Le Bon Marché, Paris, France
For the ninth year running, Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche is giving carte blanche to a contemporary artist. This year, Daniel Buren presents ‘Aux Beaux Carrés: travaux in situ’, an exhibition divided in two Acts. For Act I, which ran from January to February, the French artist embellished the department store by installing huge pieces under the central glass roofs, on the second floor and on the store windows. For Act II, which takes place from the 29th of June until the 15th of August 2024, Buren uses his "visual tool", the alternating vertical strips of 8.7 cm, and the square shape inspired by the tiles of the famous glass roofs of Le Bon Marché. An experience based on a play of shapes, movements, colours and lights.
The experience begins right outside the store where the windows of the rue de Sèvres are dressed with eight bright colours – blue, yellow, lilac, orange, pink, red, green and purple – positioned in alphabetical order, and in the form of checkerboards. Inspired by the tiles of the glass roofs of the store, two more immense works each composed of 756 squares suspended in a staggered pattern, can be found unfolding vertically under the central glass roofs to form an incredible three-dimensional checkerboard: blue and yellow for one, red and green for the other. The escalator is also adorned with the iconic alternating 8.7 cm white and transparent strips. Buren's intervention extends to a new space at Bon Marché Rive Gauche: the Primo Piano restaurant, located on the second floor of the store. Here, one can marvel at 47 square tables whose surfaces recall the colours of the works hanging under the central glass roofs. The restaurant's columns instead alternate in white and black stripes.