OLIVIER MOSSET

Olivier Mosset is a visual artist known for his contribution to the Neo-expressionism movement of the late 1970s. Mosset was also famously a member of the minimalist art group BMPT, alongside fellow artists Daniel Buren, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni (BMPT is an acronym comprised of their last names initials). Through BMPT, Mosset and his contemporaries explored the concepts of authorship and originality, as well as the belief that the art itself was more important than its authorship. BMPT took a critical stance on the nature of the new wave of the avant-garde movement in France, indicating a preference for practical techniques such as the use of neutral, repetitive patterns, as opposed to the subjectivity and expressiveness that permeated the era. Between 1966 and 1974, Mosset produced a series of over 200 identical oil paintings, all featuring a small black circle centered on a square white canvas, which reflected BMPT's experimental, yet structured approaches to painting, meant to challenge existing artistic methods and put forth the potential for artists and their artworks to serve both social and political functions. Mosset's monochrome paintings, composed the majority of his works in the late 1970s, as well as his role as a founder of the New York Radical Painting group.

Mosset's artworks were largely considered to be forms of conceptual abstraction. He employs color and shape in their purest and most simplistic forms, his focus being on the physical experiences of elements such as surface, scale, and pattern.

Mosset's work has been featured in several solo and group exhibitions. Recent solo museum exhibitions include Musée de Beaux-Arts La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland (1985); Centre d'Art Contemporain, France (1985); “Olivier Mosset 65-85,” Musée Sainte-Croix, France (1985); Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva (1986); Musée Saint Pierre Art Contemporain, Lyon (1987); “Arbeiten/travaux/works 1966-2003,” Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Switzerland (2003); “Windows,” Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006); Museo d'Arte di Mendrisio, Switzerland (2009); “A step backwards,” Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, France (2010); “Leaving the Museum,” Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2012); “Sous apparence,” Opéra national de Paris, Palais Garnier, Paris (2012); “Fakes, fêlures and walls,” Musée Régional d'Art Contemporain Languedoc-Roussilon à Sérignan, France (2013).

Born in Bern, Switzerland in 1944, Mosset current lives and works in New York as well as Tucson, Arizona.

Arizona Illustrated Episode 815 - Olivier Mosset - A Retrospective, Angel's Creek, Cutting Away