Olivier Mosset at Mamo Marseille
July 10, 2018
Olivier Mosset: Untitled, installation view, MAMO, Marseile, France, 2018. Photo: We are content(s)
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of its opening in 2013, MAMO (Marseille Modulor) hosts an exhibition by Olivier Mosset. Mosset is the sixth artist invited to MAMO (Marseille Modular) since the inaugural exhibition in 2013 by Xavier Veilhan and subsequent shows by Daniel Buren, Dan Graham, Felice Varini and Jean Pierre Raynaud. Mosset’s exhibition offers the sixth unique point of view on the rooftop of La Cité Radieuse – Le Corbusier's modernist residential housing design project, which includes 337 duplex apartments, a restaurant, bookshop, grocer, hotel and school all connected by interior streets. The rooftop of La Cité Radieuse was converted into the arts center and exhibition space by designer Ora Ito in 2013.
For the exhibition, Mosset has created a monumental monochrome work that embodies the research in painting that he has undertaken throughout the course of his career. Also on view is Mosset's 1957 Harley Davidson 74" Panhead adorned with a shimmering coat of matching paint.
Begun in the 1960s alongside Daniel Buren, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni as part of B.M.P.T., Olivier Mosset has rigorously pursued his practice of deconstructing painting for more than fifty years. Striving for a form of paintng that references only itself and its history as a medium, Mosset throws into question notions of craftsmanship, originality and the alleged uniqueness of each work. In so doing, he approaches the limits of painting itself.
Mosset's installation was specifically produced for the rooftop terrace of La Cité Radieuse. More accustomed to in-situ works that take the form of wall paintings, Mosset covered the existing 18 meter wall with metal flats painted with chameleon paint and baked to produce reflections that act as a unique tribute to the Summer sun of Marseille. Each step taken alongside this installation inspires reflections on ephemeral reality, contrasted by the robustness, immutability and tangibility of the physical nature of the work.
The exhibition is on view through September 30.