Pink Square 1990

This painting by Olivier Mosset is all smooth surfaces in lipstick pink and red, laid down as flatly as possible. I can picture the artist wanting to get the paint just right, making it perfect. I wonder about Mosset’s touch. With his kind of painting, the ‘how’ is crucial; he must’ve been thinking about what painting means when we remove gesture and texture. I can imagine him considering how the material—the actual paint—can take center stage when the painter's hand is removed. This piece relates to Mosset’s wider body of work in that he is often associated with minimalist and radical painting. Like other painters, such as Gerhard Richter, he is always thinking about the ‘who’ and ‘what’ of painting. Artists are in an ongoing conversation; there is always an exchange of ideas inspiring creativity across time. Painting offers embodied expression which allows for multiple interpretations of meaning.