“Les Anneaux”
Daniel Buren & Patrick Bouchain
Les Anneaux represents the link between two eras : the great maritime and naval past of the town, and today’s great architectural and urban projects, putting Nantes on the European stage.
Daniel Buren wanted to reveal the double perspective offered by the tip of the island: the architectural one, created by the quay, and the natural one, created by the Loire as it opens onto the estuary. A series of 18 rings turns towards the river, offering frames onto the river landscape. At night, the enlightened rings – red, blue and green, three colours at the basis of so many others – become multiseeing tools.
Daniel Buren is, without a doubt, the most famous French contemporary visual artist in the world since Les Deux Plateaux, his installation in the courtyard of the Palais Royal in Paris (1986). In 1965, Buren designs what will become his trademark, his “visual tool” : art works using striped awning canvas. The stripe is a standard 8,7 cm wide. Recognisable, simple, minimal, Daniel Buren uses this design – invariable where everything varies and moves around – in the street: his pieces become “seeing tools”.
