Daniel Buren and Jan De Cock

Taking place simultaneously across three separate locations—at the Minini galleries in Brescia and Milan and at the former Casa del Fascio in Como—the point of departure for this unique collaboration between French artist Daniel Buren and Belgian artist Jan De Cock is the architecture of Giuseppe Terragni, one of the masters of the modern movement in Italy. Terragni, a rationalist architect whose buildings are often characterized by interlocking horizontal and vertical lines reminiscent of abstract paintings, designed the Casa del Fascio in the early 1930s. De Cock found inspiration in this structure, crafting some of his signature “Denkmal” (Monument) sculptures out of white veneer, pieces characterized by strange perspectival effects and alternating solids and voids; using mirrors and green paint, Buren then made his own interventions. The three exhibitions are related, yet each adapts to its location. In the Brescia gallery, interior and exterior interact, forming an architectonic dialogue, with Buren’s mirrors revealing the most recondite meanderings created by De Cock’s physically inaccessible architecture-sculpture. (The piece fills the entire gallery, forcing viewers to observe it from the doorway.) At the Francesca Minini gallery in Milan, the artists have proceeded differently, with De Cock building on the outside and Buren working from a module provided by the Belgian artist to transform the interior. The overall feeling is of reinvention, with each artist adapting his individual language to reflect on the art and architecture of the past seventy years.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.

This exhibition is concurrently on view October 6–December 22 at the Casa del Fascio in Como and October 7–December 22 at Massimo Minini in Brescia.