Baronian is delighted to host the first solo exhibition of Swiss-American painter Olivier Mosset at the gallery in Brussels. In this exhibition, The Last Cowboy Songs, Mosset presents his most recent monochrome paintings on canvas, consisting of several polyptychs and a grid of nine panels. By using only four colors in these works – green, purple, beige, grey – the artist asserts his definition of painting as a “color applied to a canvas” – the purpose of which is to provoke a specific reaction in the viewer. Considered a key figure in post-war abstract painting, Olivier Mosset’s works question the status of a work of art, trying to reach a kind of “degree zero” of painting. According to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, Mosset’s works refer to the primacy of the object over representation, appropriation as a strategy to demystify the idea of authorship, and the monochrome as an approach to eliminate all meaning from the painting itself. Not fitting into a particular box, the painter explains, “in my case, I would always return to the concepts elaborated by Greenberg: if painting is made in a just manner, it will contain a critical dimension, as much towards itself as towards the system and the art market”. Over time, Mosset’s focus on the object itself rather than on the content, implied or otherwise, has kept him on a steady path that ensures his continued relevance nowadays.