Contemporary?
Daniel Buren
(excerpt, p. 7)
This exhibition resulted from a meeting and an
initiative originated by Véronique Wiesinger.
Rather than immediately turn down the
proposition, which for me is an astonishing one
in more ways than one, given the yawning gulf
between Giacometti's work and my own, I decided
to delay my response until I had given it more
thought.
My analysis led me to make a very singular
proposition which Véronique Wiesinger accepted.
Given that, as far as I can see, there is no aesthetic
or ethical reason for juxtaposing our two bodies
of work, what other elements might emerge from
within such obvious differences?
Quite unexpectedly, I realised that we could be
connected by one pivotal moment.
For just as my work was seriously getting going,
Giacometti's was approaching its abrupt end.
This pivotal moment is 1964–66 (Giacometti died
in January 1966).
We thus had, simultaneously, a beginning and an
end.
A confirmed body of work and one still seeking its
identity.
Pieces that were already extremely well-known
at the time and others that are still little-known
forty-five years later.
To exhibit them together, on the basis of a shared
moment, and only that, helps avoid writing a piece
of comparative aesthetic history (which would be
ridiculous, anyway) or emphasising what makes
them unalike and different (which would be no
less ridiculous).
However, I do think that history very often ignores
its strange cohabitations in time and space, the
overlapping of different if not opposing concerns.
The reason why it obliterates this reality is not the
subject here.
Multiplicity, contradiction and cacophony within
a given period, and in all periods.
Accidental encounters, therefore, but within a
concordance of time frames.
If one can speak of a dialogue between two
crashing trains, then that's the dialogue you
have in this exhibition.
(...)
