Daniel Buren is known as a radical innovator of contemporary art and Creator Projects is extremely proud to present the first solo exhibition with the French artist at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art. For EMMA, Buren has conceived a unique total work that has taken over EMMA’s 2500 square metre gallery space. Curated by EMMA’s Chief Curator Arja Miller and Simon Friese, director of Creator Projects, Buren’s Going for a Walk in a Zigzag invites visitors to navigate a zigzagging maze. The exhibition will also feature a selection of Buren’s iconic interventions and event-based pieces from his extensive career for the first time in Finland.

Les Paravents (Folding Screens) is a site-specific piece created by Buren exclusively for EMMA’s space. Drawing inspiration from the museum’s open, horizontal space and 100-metre-wide window, the work consists of a maze of giant, colourful folding screens and Buren’s signature exploded cabins (cabanes éclatées), which create surprising new spaces and varying views in which the viewer is immersed.

The exhibition will also spill outside the walls of the museum with a line-up of open-air events and interventions. A week before the opening, Buren’s signature vertical stripes enlivened Helsinki’s and Espoo’s winter landscape on over 300 JCDecaux billboards across the two cities. Buren is known for his practice of using 8.7 cm-wide vertical stripes as a visual tool to reveal hidden aspects of familiar spaces.

Also featured is Ployer/Déployer, an open-air piece of 105 striped flags to fill Espoo’s Tapionaukio square in May. Buren’s famous stripes will additionally appear on the sails of optimist dinghies competing in a regatta on Nuottaniemi Bay in a piece called Voile/Toile – Toile/Voile (Sail/Canvas – Canvas/Sail), organised in collaboration with the Espoo Pursiseura Yacht Club EPS.

Striped vests will transform the museum’s customer service personnel into a living part of a work called Essai hétéroclite: Les Gilets, travail situé (Vests). The personnel will wear striped vests throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Daniel Buren (b. 1938) regards every space as being full of possibilities. In a career spanning six decades, this pioneering French artist has challenged conventional ideas about art with his ephemeral, site-specific, boundary-pushing works critiquing art institutions. Buren is a widely acclaimed artist and winner of numerous major awards including the Golden Lion for best pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1986. One of his most famous permanent public works, Les Deux Plateaux – more commonly known as the Colonnes de Buren – is located in the inner courtyard of the Palais Royal in Paris.