The European Biennial of Contemporary Art

28 June 31 October 2014

St. Petersburg, Russia The State Hermitage Museum

Olivier Mosset

New Paintings

Olivier Mosset. Exhibition view New Paintings, January 15 - March 7, 2009,
Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zurich.
Photographer: Stefan Altenburger, Zurich.

Born 1944 in Bern, Switzerland
Lives and works in Tucson, USA

Olivier Mosset began his artistic career in the 1960s as one of the members of the group B.M.P.T. (comprised of Daniel Buren, Mosset, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni), which had formed in Paris. The group sought to democratize art through radical procedures of “deskilling,” implying that the art object was more important than its authorship. Mosset is well known for both abstract paintings and for his sculptures, and he often uses his art to question and critique established doctrines or authority. From 1993 onward he has been creating Toblerones, referring to the Toblerone Line—the Swiss anti-tank emplacements that got their name, in turn, from the iconic chocolate candy bar. Mosset’s works are in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, among other public collections. He has participated in numerous exhibitions, including Born in Bern at Kunsthalle Bern (2011), the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art (2008), and Olivier Mosset: Windows at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006), and most recently held a solo show at the Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2014).