Olivier Mosset – “Olivier Mosset” Solo Exhibition

By Chen Chi-Hsiang | Dates: May 9 to June 16 | Venue: VnH Gallery

“Something that sees nothing”

Swiss artist Olivier Mosset (born 1944) was a member of the French BMPT group in the 1970s and is a veteran of contemporary color-field abstraction. They radically broke with traditional painting, discarding all personal sensibility, subjectivity, and illusion. In a restrained, absolutely neutral, and objective painting, they conceptually explored the autonomy of painting; in zero-degree painting, everyone uses their own visual tools. Until 1971, Mosset repeated and practiced painting a black circle in the center of a one-meter-square white canvas, exploring the zero limit of painting. This circle, simplified to its minimum, became Mosset’s most striking painting vocabulary and identity marker.

After the group disbanded, Mosset liberated the taboos of his visual tools. In 1976, painter Marcia Hafif founded an radical painting group; the following year, he moved far away to New York across the Atlantic to develop new territory. He expansively pioneered color-field geometric neo-abstraction, beginning monochromatic (red, orange, pink, green) paintings where the canvas became a field of color energy, and color became the essence of his painting. In the 1980s, he reached a realm of color fields, using flat, brushstroke-free colors. By juxtaposing two same-sized monochrome paintings, he formed color-field abstractions with strong color-field contrasts (such as yellow and blue), creating spatial dynamics between color energy fields and stillness poised for movement, leading people into a world of deep silence and meditation.

Mosset’s method of applying two colors to the canvas, constructed through rigorous basic geometric forms, made him a pioneer of Western neo-geometric or abstract geometric art in the 1980s, having a profound influence on the new geometric abstract art of Geneva, Switzerland. This solo exhibition in Paris, titled “Olivier Mosset,” features a thought-provoking series of color-field geometric abstractions. The canvases show no trace of brushstrokes, with bright colors reflecting each other. Two large works are composed of five 120x240 cm panels: three white ones flanking two vertical panels (blue or red). Additionally, square compositions are formed by two 120x240 cm panels: bright purple and emerald green, black and deep purple, orange and brown, yellow and white, or white and white, among others. Sometimes warm and elegant, they harbor certain emotions and perceptions.

Unlike past untitled works, these pieces feature playful titles such as Sun City and Codillac Hotel. What is the point? For this painting that uses color fields themselves as the medium, if one seeks concrete meaning from the colors or titles, it is better to intuitively feel the subtle energy of the color field with the heart. As the artist says, a good painting is something the bystander “sees nothing.” Therefore, there is no need to waste time lingering over these indisputable reference colors and titles. (Referencing the press release for Olivier Mosset – “Olivier Mosset” Solo Exhibition)