Daniel Buren is both a representative and a critic of ‘institutional critique’, a branch of conceptual art that emerged at the end of the 1960s. His work can be recognised from the well-known stripe motif: strips of exactly 8.7 cm wide, which the artist has been describing as his ‘outil visuel’ (visual tool) since 1965. Buren not only integrates this ‘visual tool’ into places where art is exhibited, but also into the streetscape, for example on buildings, in shop windows, on buses and advertising hoardings. He thus deliberately dissolves the boundaries between the studio, the gallery, the museum and the outside world. As an ‘institutionally critical’ artist, Buren continues to stubbornly resist the codes, norms and values of the art world.
