Creating an installation for Monumenta in the nave of Paris' Grand Palais is just about the most prestigious commission any artist can win in France. This year, the honour has gone to French grand master Daniel Buren, who follows Anish Kapoor to become the fifth artist ever to fill the dazzlingly glamorous and grandiose space.
Titled 'Excentrique(s)', Buren has conjured a giant cluster of plastic circles, which overlap to form a colourful canopy. You can wander among them, watching how the light, shadows and reflections change with the weather. At night, roving spotlights bounce off the green, blue, yellow and orange panels, disco-style, while an on-a-loop sound track (of a text read in 37 different languages) ensures you won't start dancing.
'When the sun comes out, everyone is upside down,' says Buren, pointing upwards to our reflections on the circles. 'In the beginning, I was impressed by the building, and didn't know how to compete with its extravagance. But it's rather alienating. So I set about providing a human scale by creating a kind of shelter.'
His circles, held up with trademark black and white steel poles, come in four colours only, assembled on site in a repeat pattern, which began alphabetically, with b for the colour blue. You feel safe walking under them, and the reflections create rainbow like patterns under your feet, making you want to linger.
At the centre of it all are mirrored glass circles that you can walk on, to witness the top of the roof, which Buren has covered with intermittent blue panels. It creates a clever contrast between old and new, colour and transparency, pomp and simplicity. Buren, who is 64, is known for his exquisite and masterful use of space, and here you can see why.
Just about the most prestigious commission any artist can win in France, French grand master Daniel Buren, follows Anish Kapoor to become the fifth artist ever to fill the dazzlingly glamorous Monumenta in the nave of Paris' Grand Palais
Buren has created a giant cluster of plastic circles that together form a colourful canopy
You can wander among them, watching how the light, shadows and reflections change with the weather
At night, roving spotlights bounce off the green, blue, yellow and orange panels, disco-style, while an on-a-loop sound track (of a text read in 37 different languages) ensures you won't start dancing
His circles, held up with trademark black and white steel poles, come in four colours only, assembled on site in a repeat pattern, which began alphabetically, with b for the colour blue.
You feel safe walking under them, and the reflections create rainbow like patterns under your feet, making you want to linger
At the centre of it all are mirrored glass circles that you can walk on, to witness the top of the roof, which Buren has covered with intermittent blue panels. It creates a clever contrast between old and new, colour and transparency, pomp and simplicity
ADDRESS
Grand Palais
Avenue Winston-Churchill
75008 Paris - France
-
A new Athens gallery is a celebration of old and new, a stone's throw from the AcropolisNew Athens gallery Melas Martinos by Local Local is a contemporary art space, a stone's throw from the Acropolis, in the Greek capital's Monastiraki neighbourhood
-
Haute Couture Week A/W 2025: live updates from the Wallpaper* teamFrom 7-9 July, Haute Couture Week A/W 2025 arrives in Paris. Follow along for a first look at the shows, presentations and other fashion happenings, as seen by the Wallpaper* editors
-
Boundaries between art and life dissolve in Katherine Hubbard's intimate documentation of her mother's illnessIn 'The Great Room', Katherine Hubbard merges caregiving for her mother with an unflinching documentary of the process
-
‘With a small gesture of buying a postcard, we all become copyists’: the Louvre’s celebration of copying speaks to human natureContemporary artists are invited to copy works from the Louvre in a celebration of the copyist’s art, a collaboration with Centre Pompidou-Metz
-
Wolfgang Tillmans brings a performative edge to bibliophilia at the Centre Pompidou’s libraryAs the Centre Pompidou’s library is emptied ahead of the venue’s five-year restoration, the German photographer moves in for a final fling of a Paris exhibition
-
A song for the dead – Josh Homme on performing for six million souls in the bowels of the Paris CatacombsA rock band, a brush with death and an underground tomb coalesce in haunting new Queens of the Stone Age film, ‘Alive in the Catacombs’. Wallpaper* meets frontman Josh Homme and director Thomas Rames
-
The glory years of the Cannes Film Festival are captured in a new photo book‘Cannes’ by Derek Ridgers looks back on the photographer's time at the Cannes Film Festival between 1984 and 1996
-
Technology, art and sculptures of fog: LUMA Arles kicks off the 2025/26 seasonThree different exhibitions at LUMA Arles, in France, delve into history in a celebration of all mediums; Amy Serafin went to explore
-
Contemporary artist collective Poush takes over Château La CosteMembers of Poush have created 160 works, set in and around the grounds of Château La Coste – the art, architecture and wine estate in Provence
-
‘David Hockney 25’: inside the artist’s blockbuster Paris show‘David Hockney 25’ has opened at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Wallpaper’s Hannah Silver took a tour of the colossal, colourful show
-
Jack White's Third Man Records opens a Paris pop-upJack White's immaculately-branded record store will set up shop in the 9th arrondissement this weekend
