Daniel Buren

Daniel Buren’s luminescence sail-shaped banners are engineered from fiber optic textiles made by the French company Brochier Soieries.  The artist’s signature 8.7 centimeter-wide stripes glow in cold blue when an electric current is passed through them, and their irregular edges leak brilliant unfiltered light into the surrounding gallery space.

Daniel Buren

Q: People conduct their lives within given settings, at work, at home, at school. Can there be a form of art suitable for everyday living, capable of fitting in with routine and commonplace activities?

A: “As far as I’m concerned that’s precisely one of the motives inspiring my work, and it’s been that way for more than thirty-five years now. My first concern when I undertake a new job is to prove to myself as much as to others the viability of artistic endeavor in a non-artistic context; that’s definitely what interests me most. 
I feel there’s greater general awareness on these issues now than twenty-five years ago, so there are far more opportunities today for the artist to work in the urban landscape for example. 
I think, or at least I hope, that this trend is bound to continue to grow. There are several reasons, I believe, for which this is the best way for an artist to work today. In the first place, it obliges the artist to think of artistic endeavor in a different way, outside the context of a museum. It will be interesting to watch developments. Not that the museum doesn’t interest me. Indeed, it interests me a great deal, but it currently has severe limitations, especially as far as continual public involvement is concerned. The best opportunity for the artist to relate to the public is afforded by those places that are commonly shared by all, such as the city in general, or even other venues such as offices and the like. But that’s another story. Anyway, to stick to the city at large and those places in it where people dwell, meet, work, and, when possible, dream even, the work of art in such contexts takes on a new meaning. Actually, it recovers a dimension it still had up to a century and a half ago, not to speak of five centuries ago. It’s a dimension that’s been overlooked in the last hundred years or so but that’s at last become viable again. Personally, what fascinates me aside from the opportunity of working in a public square and being amidst the public as such is the fact that the whole idea of artistic production gets submitted to radical revision. The street doesn’t allow for the same kind of freedom as the museum. It entails another kind of artistic freedom whose potential still needs to be fully disclosed. Easy or difficult as it may be, it’s without a doubt a fascinating challenge.”

(Excerpt from an Interview of Daniel Buren by Ariella Risch on illywords)

Walking on Carl Andre

A rainbow array of stilettos was lined up at Sylvie Fleury’s exhibition It Might As Well Rain Until September. Exhibition-goers were invited to slip the heels on and film themselves strolling gingerly across a reflective floor sculpture, recreating Fleury’s 1997 film, Walking on Carl Andre.

Sylvie Fleury | It Might As Well Rain Until September

High minimalism mingles with symbols of feminine consumer identity in Sylvie Fleury’s It Might As Well Rain Until September. A dizzying wonderland of vertical stripes contain vulva-shaped openings, commercial slogans glow in neon, the polished surfaces of candy-colored paintings have been smashed into abstraction by a car, and a rainbow array of stilettos are lined up for exhibition-goers to stroll across a reflective floor sculpture parodying Carl Andre.

The installation saunters the fine line between art production and display, fetishized goods, and the production value of marketing luxury.

Laura Letinsky

“I began to think about the idea of leftovers. It became important for me on a number of levels, because it has to do with what you do after the promise, when you realize the promise is not possible. This is fundamental to any utopian notion–the promise and its demise. You can’t have utopia without its loss.”

Henrik Olesen

“Sex is normal as shit; sex is un-normal as shit. Sex is the hounds of hell, and intimacy – those feelings cauterized around bodies enmeshed and ideas enabled – is a never ceasing bark, yipping, chasing, trying.”

Kristi McGuire

Mike Nelson

“I decided to work with the idea of a transparency of process, a way of reading a work in a visceral, physical manner. “408 Tons of Imperfect Geometry” is pretty much a description of what it attempts to be – a working-out of a load bearing on the floor with the structure upon it, which is cast like a net. The imperfect geometry – it’s something that tries to achieve almost meditative perfection and yet, it fails; it feels strangely apt to our times.”

 -Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson