2/9/02

Buren far from boring

Daniel Buren, the French experimental artist whose ambition since the 1960s has been to remove apparent human involvement (and error?) from painting, is currently occupying the entire sixth floor (2500 square metre) of the Pompidou Centre with 61 rooms to house a show entitled ‘The Museum that didn’t exist’. While Buren’s name was made with numerous meticulously painted compositions of stripes from the l960s onwards, these small ‘cabinet’ rooms comprise a personal challenge to all curators who direct the placement of art onto their chosen location regardless of the view of the artist: Buren reverses this process and turns all the walls into a single, continuous and variegated work of art. The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou is on through 23 September, and a must for curators.