Born in 1944 in Bern, Olivier Mosset currently lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. One of the four young artists of the BMTP group (with Daniel Buren, Niele Toroni and Michel Parmentier) who revolted in 1967-68 against the artistic institution, his work goes well beyond this period. Installed in the United States since 1977, Mosset, the only European artist to have immediately located in the posterity of the great American abstract painting, has been able to build a work that measures both American formats and critical Western reflection. Geometric, monochrome and post-abstraction abstraction: the work of Mosset, who calls himself a painter before being an artist, is based on a principle of neutrality, radicalism and erasure that constantly questions the limits of painting . He bought his first motorcycle in Paris at the end of the 1960s, a Harley Davidson found in a surplus of the US Army. The young painter will contribute to the beginnings of a subculture still totally unknown in Europe at the time: that of the motorcycle club. His workshop rue de Lappe has a double function: open space to radical pictorial experiences, it also serves as a garage for the first club of Marxisants motorcyclists, whose members had sympathized with the students revolted May 68. The cars and motorcycles were a driving force in the life and work of Olivier Mosset: an attitude and a lifestyle, a means of transport and, later, from the mid-1990s, a ready-made instrument . Published by the German editions Patrick Frey Edition, Wheels looks back on the career of Olivier Mosset through the prism of his fascination with motorcycles and motorized vehicles and their influence on his artistic practice. This unique catalog includes an interview conducted by Elisabeth Wetterwal with Olivier Mosset and the American artist Vincent Szarek, as well as an essay by art historian Philip Ursprung who analyzes the importance of technology, culture and nature in the work of Mosset. There is also a descriptive chronology of all the vehicles owned by the Swiss artist during his lifetime. The 224-page book is now available on the online shop of Edition Patrick Frey.
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