The show is part of a wider examination by the Museum of techniques of painting, which started in 2002-2003 with an exhibition of works by Rolando Raggenbass. This theme was further explored in a recent one-man show of work by Gregorio Pedroli (2008), in particular as regards issues around abstraction.

Born in Neuchâtel in 1944, Olivier Mosset has been a prominent figure on the art scene since the Sixties. While his production suggests references to diverse modern movements, both postmodern and contemporary, it is highly distinctive in the way that it reflects the medium of painting interpreted in a pure material quality. Initially an assistant of Jean Tinguely and Daniel Spoerri, after a period in Paris characterised by provocative and situationist painting working with artists Daniel Buren, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni, Mosset eventually moved to New York in 1977. Here, his concept of taking painting back to zero found fertile ground in collaboration with artists such as Marcia Hafif, Frederic Thursz, Günter Umberg and Jerry Zeniuk, culminating in Radical Painting expressed through large monochrome canvases.
His return to geometric style painting, developed in the circle of “neo-geo” art, and his three-dimensional experiments with sculpture and the ”shaped canvas” are the fruit of research which continues to challenge painting through an unceasing exploration of form, between radical materialism and sophisticated intellectualism.
 

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