La Bibliothèque d'Olivier Mosset

Olivier Mosset is a Swiss-born artist who lives and works in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert. He was a founding member of the acronymically named mid-1960s B.M.P.T. Art Group, which included radically Minimalist painters Daniel Buren, Mosset, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni. The Paris-based collective elevated a democratically produced art object over Greenbergian ideas of near-spiritual artistic authorship and brushstroke, using a machine-like execution of colloquially understood signs, symbols, and hard geometric forms. It is fitting that the group came of age alongside the publication of Roland Barthes' 1967 essay "The Death of the Author" / "La mort de l'auteur," which argued for prioritizing the reading of a text or sign as seen from the perspective of the viewer or reader, rather than that of the artist.

Still young during the Paris student movements of 1968, Mosset is an artist who continues to live according to many of the ideas associated with that period. I captured images of Mosset playfully showing visitors how he stores some of his books using a retired refrigerator as a makeshift bookshelf. Mosset is often seen driving around Tucson in Levi’s 501s, a black leather jacket, and chaps, either on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle or in his Chevrolet El Camino, both customized in the style of Southwestern Chicano hot rod culture. Like many artists of his generation, he chose to settle outside major art-market centers such as New York City, London, and Paris, building a life and practice in the American Southwest.

Digital photographs and writing by Samuel Nohe Ireland. © 2025

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**Special thanks to Olivier for allowing me to visit and share his studio with me.