Olivier Mosset selected for Whitney Biennial

Spencer Brownstone Gallery is delighted to announce the participation of Olivier Mosset in the upcoming Whitney Biennial 2008.

Olivier, who was born in Switzerland in 1944, now spends his time between New York and Tucson, Arizona. He has had three solo exhibitions at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, most recently in March 2007.

The artist’s astute and often provocative approach to painting has kept him at the cutting-edge of contemporary art since he first came to prominence in Paris in the late 1960's, alongside Daniel Buren, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni. After relocating to New York in 1978, Mosset’s body of monochrome canvases were a key influence on the generation of Neo-Geo painters who emerged in the 80’s. His selection for the 2008 Biennial underscores the continued relevance of his practice to a new generation.

Working always within painting's particular limitations and concerns, and with a deep understanding of the sensuality and physicality of color, Mosset's work nevertheless engages acutely with the network of institutional relations that underlie our encounter with art. For his 2003 solo show at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, the artist installed two huge floor-to-ceiling monochrome canvases, whose sublime scale and orange coloring were playfully undermined by the fact that the artist chose their color based on the gallery’s letterhead design.

Mosset’s shaped canvases similarly play games with our expectations of the meaning and functions of painting. In his solo show at the gallery last year, a three-part yellow circular work that was shown next to two customized motorcycles designed by legendary mechanic Indian Larry, could be read as either pure painting, or an almost absurd cipher for a motorbike-and-rider (Olivier himself is a lifelong biker). The artist’s ‘Red Dot’, 2007, a 48 inch diameter red canvas that riffs on the ubiquitous symbol for a ‘sold’ artwork, currently hangs in the gallery office for inspiration. As the late Jean Baudrillard noted, Olivier's work is "…like a witticism, in its nonsensical and elliptical form, ridiculing all the heavy armature of language and communication."

The 2008 Whitney Biennial opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on March 6, and runs through June 1, 2008. Since its founding in 1932, the Biennial has evolved into the most important survey of the state of contemporary art in the United States. The 2008 Biennial is curated by Henriette Huldisch, Assistant Curator at the Whitney, and Shamim M. Momin, Associate Curator at the Whitney and Branch Director and Curator of the Whitney Museum at Altria, and overseen by Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s Chief Curator and Associate Director for Programs.

Read more on Olivier Mosset here