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When Olivier Mosset first created monochromatic paintings in the ‘60s in France, it was primarily to make a political statement. The art scene at the time was dominated by neo-realism and pop art, so Mosset founded the “Radical Painting Group,” established largely to criticize the art of the day and the political undertones in the marketplace.

“With the one-color paintings, we were making the statement about painting that – so what, you do, can do a painting just like that,” Mosset said. But what began as a vehicle to question the fundamental nature of painting became something more.  “The thing is, you start to do these paintings because you want to say something. Then the problem of actually doing the painting itself is what you get into,” Mosset said.

In the late ‘60s, Mosset also helped establish another artists’ group known as BMPT, an acronym made up of the names of the four participating artists -- Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, and Toroni. One of the issues the group questioned was the idea of the ownership of art. Any artwork produced was considered the property not of the individual artist but of the entire group.

The group has long since disbanded, and, ironically, arguments about the attribution and ownership of individual works began soon afterward and have persisted. But Mosset still asserts his interest in the idea of the ownership of art. “What counts is the object. Who does it is less important,” he said. Yet, for the most part, the politics of painting holds little interest for Mosset., who said he now paints for the most selfish of reasons.

“First of all, I used to know what was happening in the art world. Now I don’t know so much, and am more interested in what I can do, anyway,” he said. “I don’t care what people get from my work. The work is what it is, and people will get from it whatever they will get from it.” What does Mosset get from it?

“The thing is you start to paint for whatever reason,” he said. “I don’t know why…It might be Freudian, but from then on you start to ask questions, and then you go on because you come up with more questions and because you want to try and do different things. I have a couple more things I want to try. But who knows, if I become unhappy with it, I will stop.”

  The works are acrylic on canvas with semi-gloss surfaces that are handled to appear as flat as possible. The most impressive thing, at first sight, is the sheer scale of some of the sculpted canvases, which range from 10 to 21 feet long.

Over the years, Mosset has drifted in and out of monochromatic painting, sometimes exploring dual colors such as stripes or contrasting borders. For Mosset, the guiding principle behind his work is more complicated, and even he isn’t always sure what it is exactly. “I’m looking for something and I don’t know what it is,” he confessed.

One constant, however, has been his attempt to create paintings that possess “neutrality and effacement,” with as little evidence as possible of the artist who created them. “I want the works to be seen as a fact,” He said.

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