For decades, Olivier Mosset has been one of the most influential, provocative, and widely collected contemporary artists in Europe. But here in the US, he’s been less well known (although he does, deservedly, have work in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, now underway in New York).

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art is pleased to bring Olivier Mosset to a wider audience here in the West, with a major show of his paintings and sculptures from the 1980s through the present. The show will be among the first to open in Zane Bennett Contemporary Art’s new, state-of-the-art, completely renovated gallery at 435 South Guadalupe Avenue in Santa Fe.

Mosset, who was born in Switzerland, has been at the front of the Avant Garde movements in both Europe and the US since the 1960s. His canvases, ranging from monochrome to conceptual, are sometimes shaped into letters, dollar signs, or other forms, employing language in spare, intricate ways, “like a witticism,” the critic Jean Baudrillard, writes, “ridiculing all the heavy armature of language and communication.” His sculptures play equally provocatively with form, context, and the expectations of the viewer.

Mosset has had solo shows throughout the world, including major retrospectives in Switzerland. He also represented Switzerland in the 44th Venice Biennale, and will be part of a two-man show this summer at the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis.

But his show, Olivier Mosset in Santa Fe at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art, represents his first significant appearance in Santa Fe in recent years. “We are very pleased to have such a major talent as one of the opening shows at the new Zane Bennett Contemporary Art,” says Sandy Zane, the owner and director of Zane Bennett Contemporary Art.