Pink Square 1990

Olivier Mosset created this piece, titled Pink Square, using paint on canvas. It’s one of those paintings where the surface seems so smooth, so flawless, you almost don’t see the hand of the artist in it, but I think that’s the point. Up close, you can appreciate the almost industrial flatness of the colours. The pink square in the centre is so unapologetically pink, while the red-orange shapes on either side vibrate with a quiet intensity. The texture is almost non-existent, like a perfectly printed image, challenging our ideas about the role of gesture and touch in painting. It asks, what happens when you strip away all the expressive marks and are left with just pure colour and form? It reminds me a little bit of some of Ellsworth Kelly's shaped canvases, where the painting becomes an object as much as an image. Mosset invites us to see painting not as a window onto another world, but as a thing in itself.