Olivier Mosset edition to benefit
carriage trade
carriage trade
62 Walker Street
New York, NY
10013
For his exhibition Born in Bern, at the Bern Kunstshalle in 2011, Olivier Mosset drew on memorable aspects of his experience of that city as a child. One event that stayed with the artist was witnessing the aftermath of a derailed tram that came down the mountain and crashed into a large fountain in the city center. A little research by Mosset and the museum led them to Paul Gilgen, the photographer for the railway, who had photographed the tram after the collision. While the matter-of-fact composition of the photograph suggests a pragmatic concern for reportage of the event, the oddity of the tram’s unexpected presence within the placid town square is confirmed by the inclusion of a perplexed local citizen within the picture’s frame. The “direct hit” on the fountain by the tram forced two very different objects into relation with one another; the utilitarian railway car which, until now, had been limited to daily treks up and down the mountain, and the stone statue, anchoring the public square with its monumental presence. Their unlikely encounter is almost dream-like, a surrealistic moment whose curiosity is fixed by the certainty of its existence as a photographic document.
Working with this image which was originally part of an installation for Mosset’s exhibit at the Bern Kunsthalle, the artist produced a benefit edition on behalf of carriage trade, a non-profit exhibition space on Walker Street in lower Manhattan. For further information on the edition visit carriagetrade.org/Olivier-Mosset or contact Peter Scott at pscott.carriagetrade.org
Oliver Mosset
Born in Bern, Switzerland in 1944, Oliver Mosset moved to Paris in 1962, where he collaborated with Daniel Buren, Niele Toroni and Michel Parmentier, (known as BMPT) who, through making each other’s paintings, collectively asserted their ambivalence towards claims of authorship so central to the authority of painting. Mosset’s paintings focus on the monochrome, a deceptively simple aesthetic concern that deviates between an “authorless” material object and a hand made “picture” that reveals nothing more than its intent to be viewed. Collaboration has remained an important part of Mosset’s work. Since BMPT he has worked with, among others, Marcia Hafif and Joseph Marioni, Andy Warhol, Stephen Parrino, Cady Noland, John Armleder, and “Indian Larry” Desmedt. He has participated in numerous exhibitions, including the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1990) and the Whitney Biennial (2008).
carriage trade
Through presenting primarily group exhibitions, carriage trade functions not as a means to promote the careers of individual artists, but to provide contexts for their work that seeks to emphasize its relevance to larger social and political conditions prevalent today. Some past exhibitions include Mistaken Identity, a portrait exhibition which included Dan Graham, John Schabel, Carol Irving, and the non-profit law firm The Innocence Project, Another Green World with Via Celmins, Barbara Ess, Mathias Kessler, and Gerhard Richter, Jef Geys Woodward Avenue, Picture No Picture, with Allan Mcollum, Louise Lawler, J. Pasila, Sherrie Levine, and Liz Deschenes, and Henry Codax. The gallery’s first shows in 2008 were on Prince Street in Soho, a neighborhood which, once a base of small manufacturing and warehouses in the late seventies and early eighties, and then artist’s lofts and art galleries until the early nineties, has primarily returned to the role it played as a high-end shopping district in the mid-1800’s, during America’s “first” Gilded Age. carriage trade is now located at 62 Walker Street near Broadway, six blocks south of its original location.
The next exhibition at carriage trade, Color Photographs from the WPA (1939-1943), will open March 22, 2012 and run through April 29, 2012.
