Olivier Mosset

UNTITLED has been eagerly awaiting to present a rather peculiar two-person exhibition with painters

Haley Mellin and Olivier Mosset.

This show is borne out of the friendship between the two artists, a relationship made of continuous exchanges between painters of different generations, epitomizing the dialogue on contemporary painting.

Here, Haley Mellin presents her compulsively realistic, idiosyncratically detailed, densely layered paintings for the first time. Focusing on the painter's rag and studio objects, Mellin points to all the other paintings in her studio, which will remain unseen. What is important then is the very act of painting, the life of an artist, the struggle of making anew in front of the terrifying blank support. These canvases bear the evidence that paint is being used to create without showing what exactly is being created, and in so doing, set up anticipation for what will be actualized. And the work will forever rest in this anticipation, forever trapped in the limbo of wondering what the artist is hiding.

On the other hand, Olivier Mosset's zeros in the support itself, a white circular canvas at once negating and incorporating all the possibilities that painting provides.

A two-person exhibition then becomes an imaginary group show suggesting the presence of many other painters and contemporary artists, all dealing in one way or another with the same essential and existential throes.