Leading French Conceptualist Sets Sail With Art

Wednesday, 06 July 2005 11:03

GRASMERE. UK- One of the most striking pieces of art from leading French conceptualist Daniel Buren is being restaged in the Lake District this summer - the first time it has been brought to the UK. Voile/Toile Toile/Voile involves his trademark stripes painted onto the sails of a fleet of nine small sailing boats that will take part in a regatta on Grasmere . Immediately after the completion of the race, the sails will be taken from the boats and hung in the Old Library at the Wordsworth Trust in the order they finished. Voile/Toile Toile/Voile, literally translates as, and transforms "sail to canvas: canvas to sail" and is regarded as one of Buren's most thought provoking works. Originally created for a regatta on the Wannsee, Berlin, before being shown at the Berlin Academy of Arts 1975, this is the first time this important work has been brought to the UK. The project coincides with Sea Britain 2005 - this year’s celebration of Britain’s maritime heritage - and a major Buren retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. After studying painting, Buren, born in 1938, began working in striped cloth, with the stripes always 8.7cm apart. From 1965 onwards he has used this method to adorn a variety of interior and exterior sites. In 1968, for example, Daniel Buren, without permission, put up 200 striped posters around Paris; in 1970, also unauthorized, he put up striped posters in 140 Metro stations. By distributing stripes to various places, he drew public attention. Daniel Buren (b.1938) lives and works in France and is internationally recognised as one of the most important artists of the post-war generation. His work is included in most major collections and he held recent major solo exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2002, and Hangzhou and Shenzhen, in China and the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2005. "The work focuses attention onto the autonomy of the art object and draws attention to the specific visual and ideological characteristics of each site. It links the art work with Grasmere as well as exploring both painting and the object."

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