L’oeuvre a-t-elle lieu? (Does the work take place?)

Each year, since its inception in 1990, Witte de With has invited an artist to curate an exhibition. Witte de With encourages each guest curator to develop his project according to his own personal choices so that the resulting exhibition offers the audience another vision, independent of the center’s own program. This year L’oeuvre a-t-elle lieu? was curated by Daniel Buren (1938, Paris).

Daniel Buren invited the following artists to participate in his project: Giovanni Anselmo (1934), Michael Asher (1943), Stanley Brouwn (1935), Patrick Corillon (1959), Jacqueline Dauriac (1945), Krijn de Koning (1963), Thierry Kuntzel (1948), and Chen Zhen (1945).

Since the late sixties Buren has been concerned with the question of site. His work seeks to reveal the place of exhibition (museum or gallery) in its defects, contradictions, and particularities. Each proposition is elaborated in accordance with a defined space (in situ) and accompanied by a description, explanatory notes, and plans. For his exhibition at Witte de With, Buren proposed inviting eight artists to carry out pieces in concordance with his own approach.

In L’oeuvre a-t-elle lieu? the question of site was decisive for the elaboration of the individual pieces.
In his letter of invitation, Buren asked the above-mentioned artists to participate according to specific rules in an exhibition that would take place in an “abstract” space. By concealing the actual name and location of the exhibition space, Buren cut his artists off from any context that could directly refer to the representational systems of the international art scene and major art events and gave them the opportunity to freely create their own specific space for exhibiting their work.