Collaborative Reduction: Q+A With Olivier Mosset

"Artist as Collector: Olivier Mosset," a new show at the MOCA Tucson in Arizona, introduces the pioneering artist's spirit of generosity and collaboration. The exhibit showcases his extensive collection of once and future emerging artists—acquired through barter for his own work.

Collaboration has been central to the Swiss-born, Tucson-based Mosset's work at least since he co-founded BMPT (Buren, Mosset, Parmentier and Toroni) in Paris circa 1966. That group sought to radically challenge notions of authorship, uniqueness and exchange value by signing each other's paintings and using de-skilled compositional techniques that could be repeated anytime.
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Karthik Pandian: Porous Reality, Timeless Architecture

Labyrinths and temples are two structures pivotal in the vocabulary of Los Angeles-based Karthik Pandian's 16-mm films and architectural constructions. With the weight of an ancient lineage that transcends historical context, Pandian draws in the present, where the monuments take on forms outside of our normal expectations. An early work, Darkroom (2008), consists of a labyrinthine set-up of scaffolding and panels. Within this, projectors screen 16mm film of inter-spliced glimpses of sites in Berlin and L.A. and a voiceover that seductively draws the listener into a realm of nightclubs featuring figures from Greek mythology and makes an analogy to the legendary techno club Berghain in Berlin (darkrooms are found scattered throughout this former power plant). For Pandian, the nightclub is a monument with a sacred relationship to the body, inspiring dancing, repetitive machines.
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Paul P's New Body

Paul P.'s portraits-romantic and sensual but not explicity sexual paintings, primarily featuring young men-are elusive, sensitive incidents amidst a saturated genre. They are also thoroughly researched, his subjects sourced from 1970s and 80s porn magazines from the Toronto Lesbian and Gay Archive, which the Canadian-born artist frequently revisits from Paris, where he has lived for the past five years. The tension created by these dense images is part of a historical inquiry into the motivations of genre. In "Sherbert in Damascus," P.'s new exhibition at Daniel Reich Gallery in New York, the artist takes a different tack, vacating his pictures and focusing, in dark and chalky oils, on the mystique of landscape.

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Greater Idols

Cookies, a Botticelli monograph and gold jumpsuits are just some of the disparate objects currently located in PS1's rotating gallery space. Curated by ICI (Independent Curators International) director Kate Fowle, the backroom features a temporary archive of objects and documents contributed by 40 of the Greater New York artists to represent the major influences in their work.
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