With his striking monochromatic abstract geometric paintings, Olivier Mosset is a critical figure in post-war abstraction. Although his work defies easy categorization and questions of intended meaning, it is best described as a rebellious form of conceptual abstraction.
Our work “Untitled” from 1974 is part of the famous series the artist created from 1966 to 1974: a series of almost identical oil paintings with a black circle in the center of a white canvas. All the works are identical; the canvases measure 1 meter x 1 meter, with a square painted white and a black, 3.25-centimeter-thick circle in the center. The circle – often interpreted as a zero or an “O” because of its radicalness, which refers to the first letter of Mosset's first name – invokes another allographic system: the roundness of musical notation. Through its repetition, the circle is decoded as a mute or quiet pulsation.
Mosset worked on this series for almost a decade, developing a clear, sharp, mechanical visual language that negates any impression of human authorship. Like Andy Warhol, whom Mosset met in 1967 and pursued the same path with his “Campbell's Soup Cans,” the circle paintings question the concepts of artistic authorship, authenticity, and value. Mosset began experimenting with this imagery when he became part of the anti-expressive, anti-individualist Parisian “BMPT” group, including Daniel Buren, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni. Through their experimental approach to painting, the group sought to challenge established art production methods and proposed theories about a new social and political function for art and artists. During the decade that Olivier Mosset was occupied with the circle paintings and his later experiments with other shapes and colors, his work continued to represent pure materiality and to encourage open physical experiences involving surface, scale, and pattern.
Olivier Mosset's works have been featured in countless solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. He has had several retrospectives and presented his work in the Swiss Pavilion at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 and Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg in 2014. Olivier Mosset's works are part of major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Musée des beaux-arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland. [KA]