Olivier Mosset: Exploded painting/exploded curating (part 2)

“Art is a distraction. Art is false. Painting begins with Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni”, 1967

Olivier Mosset is one of the central figures in post-war abstract painting, and a pivotal reference for generations of European and American painters. Born in 1944 in Bern, Switzerland, Olivier Mosset lives in Tucson, Arizona. Mosset was one quarter of BMTP with Daniel Buren, Niele Toroni and Michel Parmentier. About their third manifestation in June 1967, Marcel Duchamp declared, ‘‘as a frustrating Happening, you won’t find any better”. Mosset moved to New York in 1977, where together with Marcia Hafif he cofounded in 1984 the Radical Painting movement. Mosset’s work embraces neo-geometric abstraction, monochrome and post-abstraction. Mosset, who calls himself a painter rather than an artist, creates an art rooted within a principle of neutrality, radicality and erasure which constantly questions the limits of painting.

Together with Olivier Mosset we will envisage art politics since the 1960s, ongoing challenges of authorship, ownership and curatorial stance, and what has led him to work with, among others, John Armleder, Jean Baudrillard, Robert Barry, Sylvie Fleury, Bob Nickas, Cady Noland, Steven Parrino, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Jean Tinguely.

The INSIDE/OUT public programme of lectures invites speakers and leading thinkers whose breadth of work, practice, thought and collaboration we feel will inspire all our students and staff across the wide range of disciplines in the Leeds School of Arts.