FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 2021
Contact: Colter Ruland
Email: colter.ruland@prforartists.com
Phone: (520) 370-4602
Tucson Museum of Art Presents OLIVIER MOSSET, a Contemplative & Mystifying Exhibition of the Artist’s Expansive Body of Work
Tucson, AZ – Tucson Museum of Art (TMA) presents OLIVIER MOSSET, a solo exhibition of internationally renowned artist Olivier Mosset, featuring a collection of works that question artistic authorship and the ways we understand and define art.
Swiss-born, Tucson-based artist Olivier Mosset, born in 1944 in Bern, Switzerland, is known for his large-scale monochrome, reductive, and shaped paintings that challenge the notion of modernist authority and painting as a historical object, approaches linked to appropriation and geometric and conceptual abstraction. A member of the avant-garde BMPT painting group in the mid-1960s, he moved to New York City in 1977 and joined the Radical Painting Group, establishing himself as a prominent international abstract painter.
In 1995, after a productive artistic career in Paris, France, and New York City, Mosset moved to Tucson, Arizona, and continued to exhibit internationally from his home base in Arizona. Since the mid-1980s, Mosset has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout Europe, the United States, and around the world, including the prestigious 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 and the Whitney Biennial in New York City in 2008.
The exhibition presents important paintings from the 1970s, 1990s, and 2000s, including large-scale modular paintings, monochrome canvases, minimalist site-specific works, and objects rooted in Dadaist impulses. Additionally, expansions of Mosset’s studio practice can be seen in the exhibition by the inclusion of the artist’s 1964 Chevrolet El Camino, 1954 Harley Davidson 45 motorcycle, two site-specific murals, a time-based ice sculpture, and an untitled photograph of an adoring museum professional’s actual tattoo of a Mosset work.
OLIVIER MOSSET is the culmination of numerous conversations and musings between the artist and curator Dr. Julie Sasse, TMA’s chief curator, who have worked together closely for over a decade. The exhibition is a testament to the incredible scholarship of Dr. Sasse and enhanced by her incising essay for the exhibition catalogue, “Olivier Mosset: This Is (not) the Last Cowboy Song,” on this historically significant artist and complex subject matter.
According to Dr. Sasse, “Mosset’s paintings can be enjoyed by everyone, from the most knowledgeable scholar to the general public, including children. What is important is the visual encounter one can have with such powerful, large-scale and colorful paintings. They are engaging works by their sheer presence.”
Mosset’s contribution to abstraction, minimalism, and conceptualism, has made an indelible mark on the art world at large and especially in the American West. With his studio practice in Tucson, AZ, Mosset has reoriented preconceptions about the region he once described as a “ghost town.”
With its exhibition at the Tucson Museum of Art, OLIVIER MOSSET turns the museum into an art experience that is at turns contemplative and mystifying.
Exhibition Dates:
October 14, 2021 – February 27, 2022
On view in the James J. and Louise R. Glasser Galleries, Earl Kai Chann Gallery, and Lois C. Green Gallery.
OLIVIER MOSSET is accompanied by a full-color catalogue and limited-edition linocut, Untitled, 2021, printed by Santo Press. Available for purchase at the Museum Store.
Museum Hours:
Thursday – Sunday
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
About Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block
As an institution built upon the original territories of the O’odham, the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block (TMA) acknowledges the Indigenous Sonoran Desert communities, past and present, who have stewarded this region throughout generations.
TMA connects art to life through meaningful and engaging experiences that inspire discovery, spark creativity, and promote cultural understanding. Founded in 1924, TMA encompasses an entire city block in historic downtown.
TMA is committed to developing quality exhibitions, expanding, and diversifying its collection and presenting relevant and innovative programs while broadening public access to the arts.
The museum features exhibitions of Modern and Contemporary art, Latin American art from ancient to today, Indigenous arts and Art of the American West. A permanent collection of over 12,000 works of art spans continents, centuries, and media. TMA’s campus includes five properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an art education center and research library, the Museum Store, and the highly acclaimed museum restaurant Café a la C’Art.
TMA is a private 501(c)(3) charitable arts and education organization. More info: TucsonMuseumofArt.org or (520) 624-2333.
