Olivier Mosset

de Gianni Jetzer, Olivier Mosset

When the young painter Olivier Mosset bought his first motorcycle in Paris in the late 1960s - a Harley Davidson from the US Army - he founded a subculture that was still completely unknown in Europe: the motorcycle club. Mosset's studio on the Rue de Lappe was both the place of origin of radical painting - such as conceptually reduced black circles on a white background - as well as the meeting place and workshop of the first motorcycle club of Marxist character. One sympathized with the student revolt of May '68. The book WHEELS notes the importance of motorcycles and cars in the life and work of Olivier Mosset; as a way of life, a means of transportation and, finally, from the mid-1990s also as a sculptural readymade. The book follows the artistic career of Mosset through the interplay of vehicles and painting; each motor vehicle used by him is briefly described and biographically classified. An interview by the critic Elisabeth Wetterwald with Olivier Mosset and the US artist Vincent Szarek, who has learned his craft in car body refinement and has repeatedly collaborated with Mosset, has made the interface between art and motorcycling: Mosset's vehicle shown both in the museum and on motorcycle shows from different perspectives. In his essay, art historian Philip Ursprung analyzes the importance of technology, culture and nature in Mosset's work, which has always moved westward, from the foot of the Jura via Paris to New York, and finally, in 1996, by motorbike to Tucson, Arizona.--