See Inside The Colorful World Of Artist Daniel Buren With Mitico

There are few personalities in contemporary art as revered—and recognisable—as Daniel Buren, the multi-awarded French conceptual artist and sculptor whose visually arresting work has graced the Grand Palais in Paris, the Venice Biennale (where he’s exhibited almost a dozen times and was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion in 1986), and even a Louis Vuitton Artycapucines bag in 2022.

To say he has a way with color is very much an understatement. “Color is a basic way of speaking to people without having to say much,” says Buren, who often employs striking hues in carefully proportioned vertical stripes that has become his signature. When we met at La Residencia, A Belmond Hotel, Mallorca, Buren looked very much the part of a color enthusiast, wearing a shirt adorned with multi-colored buttons.

The 86 year old artist was in Mallorca to unveil his work to a buzzing crowd that gathered in the creative enclave of Deia. Taking the form of an L-shaped pergola, the intriguing piece stood out against the background of terra cotta buildings. When the sun shone through it, it created exuberant technicolor ripples that provided different perspective of what seemed like a straightforward creation.

“You should always create work for yourself because you don’t know who the other people are and what they’re thinking,” says Buren “but I also definitely think about the viewer’s experience.”

The World As A Canvas

The work at La Residencia is one of Buren’s six works in situ for Mitico, Belmond’s annual art program in partnership with Galleria Continua in which they invite artists to collaborate and create original works in their properties. The first two seasons featured seven renowned artists, and 2024 is the first time that the program features a single artist.

In 2023, Galleria Continua co-founder and director Lorenzo Fiaschi approached Buren about working together. Surprised by the commission, Buren agreed and went to visit the hotels to begin the creative process. This allowed him to see the environment—basically his canvas—first-hand. “Reality is much more interesting than a photograph,” he says about the gardens and open spaces that now house his work.

The result is the series “Haltes Colorées”, meaning ‘colorful halt’, which kicked off in February 2024 at Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Cape Town. The other works launched subsequently throughout the year, and are still available to be experienced in Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro; Villa San Michele in Florence, Castello di Casole in Tuscany and Hotel Cipriani in Venice. Buren says there’s nothing in particular that links the locations or his works, except that all of them are set within beautiful locations and inspired by them.

A Life In Color

Buren explains that he was always drawn to visual art as a child, and that at 16 years old he thought he would become a filmmaker. The commercial side of film didn’t interest him much, and so he began to explore other creative avenues.

While most of his work can be described as “architectural”, he cautions that there is a world of difference between an architect and an artist. “What architects build have a distinct function, while an artist’s work has no function... but something can happen from it.”

Indeed, while Buren’s pergola-shaped work in situ at La Residencia may not necessarily function as an ordinary one normally would, it certainly makes you stop, look closely and enjoy the moment. There’s just something about color that puts people in a good mood, and Buren’s work has a joyous quality to it that immediately sparks curiosity.

Even after all these years, Buren says that choosing between two or three possibilities remains a challenging part of being an artist. And the most crucial part for him is picking the colors. For him, colors are not just colors, they are materials in and of themselves.

And while he has been working for over five decades, many still make the mistake of calling his large-scale creations as “installations”, when they are “works in situ”. “Installations are the same and get moved, while these are temporary pieces inspired and made for a place then disappears,” he stresses.

Sometimes, components of Buren’s work end up being repurposed in the interest of sustainability. When the work is dismantled, the materials revert to their original state—becoming mirrors, colored panels, and wooden poles again.

It just goes to show that Buren’s genius is not only in putting together ordinary materials and creating an eye-catching architectural sculpture, but in giving viewers a moment of escape. To those lucky enough to witness the magic of Buren’s work, it’s like peeking inside a kaleidoscope—you want to look in again.

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