Daniel Buren Mentor 2025
Each year, Reiffers Art Initiatives invites a major international figure in contemporary art to become the mentor of an emerging artist of the French scene. The mentor makes the final choice of the winner of the mentorship program from a selection of emerging artists put forward by the artistic committee. The mentorship will result in an exhibition during Art Basel Paris.
Mentor 2025
Daniel Buren
An iconic figure of contemporary art in France and celebrated worldwide, Daniel Buren will take on the role of Reiffers Art Initiatives mentor in 2025, following in the footsteps of Rashid Johnson (2021), Kehinde Wiley (2022), Lorna Simpson (2023), and Ugo Rondinone (2024). He has chosen to mentor Miles Greenberg, a young Canadian artist. The result of this mentorship will be showcased at the Reiffers Art Center from October 22 to December 13.
Daniel Buren was born in 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt. He sums up his biography in a single phrase: “lives and works in situ.” For several decades, Buren has created site-specific works, designing them in direct response to particular locations, taking into account the space, architecture, exhibition context, physical setting, and its relationship to the outside world. One of his most renowned works is "Les Deux Plateaux" (1985–1986), a site-specific installation more commonly known as the famous “Buren Columns” in the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais-Royal, featuring his signature 8.7 cm-wide vertical stripes.
Daniel Buren has created site-specific works in some of the world’s most prestigious museums: Palais d’Iéna (Paris, 2023), MoMA (New York, 2022), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, 2018), Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 2017), Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris, 2016), MADRE (Naples, 2015), Grand Palais (Paris, 2013), Musée Picasso (Paris, 2008), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 2005), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2004), and Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2002).
“What immediately drew me to Miles Greenberg’s work—beyond its obvious qualities—was the apparent lack of connection to my own. Our joint exhibition will allow two distinct, strongly defined practices to blend and confront one another. This approach, which may seem more conflictual at first glance, is particularly compelling to me.”
Daniel Buren
YOUNG TALENT
Mentorship 2025
Miles Greenberg
From the selection of young talents proposed by the artistic committee, Daniel Buren chose to support the Canadian artist Miles Greenberg.
Miles Greenberg was born in 1997 in Montreal, Canada. He is a performance artist and sculptor whose work consists of large-scale, sensorially immersive, site-specific environments centered on the physical body in space. These installations are activated by often durational performances that invoke the body as sculptural material, aiming to make visible the poetics of the human form—particularly through the lens of the African diaspora. His performances are captured in real time before a live audience, giving rise to subsequent video works and sculptures.
Rigorous and ritualistic in his methodology, Greenberg’s practice is rooted in slowness and the decomposition of form as a means to awaken the viewer’s sensitivity. The result resembles a ritual space that invites both performer and audience to explore, decode, and honor emotions that dwell and resonate within the body—often beyond the realm of language.
“Establishing this artistic dialogue with Daniel Buren is both an honor and a challenge: we share many commonalities, but also have distinct differences. I create works that inhabit space in order to activate it; he creates works meant to be inhabited and activated. Daniel Buren is a major figure in contemporary art who has, for decades, boldly pushed the boundaries of materiality in art, while my own practice—fundamentally immaterial—seeks to express itself through materiality. These parallels and tensions strike me as fertile ground for deep and meaningful exploration.”
Miles Greenberg
The Program
THE MENTOR
The artistic committee presents the mentor with a selection of young artists whose visual and conceptual work has caught their attention.
Daniel Buren selected the young 28-year-old Canadian from a shortlist of artists proposed by the endowment fund.
THE YOUNG TALENT
The mentor passes on his or her experience and advice to the young talent in a long-term intergenerational dialogue.
During the mentorship, which lasts several months, the mentor engages with the selected artist around their respective practices, in a spirit of openness and dissemination of artistic know-how.
THE EXHIBITION
The result of the work accomplished during the mentoring program is presented in an exhibition that opens every year in Paris in the Fall, during Art Basel Paris.
Art Basel Paris is a key event in Paris, bringing together major players in the contemporary art world to present and showcase the creations of the mentorship winner.