The Ring of Windsocks - Daniel Buren

For this artwork, the artist has chosen to follow the contour of the crater, a real passageway for users of the La Défense site, to draw a 30.56 m circle just above it. Sixteen 10 m high galvanised steel masts are installed at regular intervals, at the top of which are fixed stainless steel weather vanes and multicoloured air vents, made of polyester fabric consisting of alternating white and coloured vertical strips of 8.7 cm. These gigantic windsocks, more than four metres long, rotate continuously following the direction of the wind, which is the predominant element on the esplanade. At dusk, they are transformed into luminous artworks thanks to the LEDs placed inside the cones.

A word about the artist

Daniel Buren studied at the École des Métiers d'Art and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He has experimented with painting, sculpture and cinema. He has created hundreds of artworks in situ all over the world that invade space to reveal its spatial, institutional and aesthetic limits. Each of Buren's works renews the relationship between the artwork, the place and the spectator.