Colored Triangles by Myriad for Riyadh

Daniel Buren is one of the most active and acclaimed artists on the international art scene today, and his work has been shown in leading galleries and museums and a wide range of sites worldwide. His “visual tool” is based on the use of alternating white and colored stripes, which let him reveal the significant details of the site where he is working, by employing them in specific, at times complex, structures lying somewhere between painting, sculpture and architecture.

Through a play of colors, reflections, transparencies and contrasts, Buren’s Colored Triangles by Myriad for Riyadh (2020-2021) shows the Conference Center of the King Abdullah Financial District in a completely new light. The Conference Center is designed as an extension of the angular desert landscape; its organic profile and faceted surface stitch together the structure and the adjacent terrain. Buren covers the building’s iconic roof, made of 153 triangles and formed by 9,889 smaller triangles, with a staggering array of colored filters that are in turn punctuated at equal distance from one another by alternating white triangles. The six selected colors make forms appear and disappear, ever-changing with the time of day and season. The pattern according to which colors are applied to the triangles always follows the same principle. Yet, despite this, the work appears at first glance like an explosion of colors that do not reveal immediately the system of their construction – like the stars in the sky.