Olivier Mosset, Ice Toblerone, Art Unlimited Art 35 Basel
OLIVIER MOSSET - ICE TOBLERONE
Art | Unlimited
Art | 35 | Basel | 16-21 | 6 | 04
Collaboration by: Galerie Susanna Kulli, Zurich and Galerie Skopja Genève.
A Toblerone[*] in ice. The idea of reproducing an antitank block in ice sounds like a summer joke. Indeed, Olivier Mosset is an artist with a great sense of humor, in spite of the harsh appearance of his work and the usual reputation which sticks to motorcyle riders...
Beyond purely formal aspects that provoke Olivier Mosset’s interest in military architecture, there are – of course – artistic motivations: these concrete blocks now without strategic fonctions have not lost their aesthetic value and continue to have influence on the Swiss landscape if not define it. From this point of view, the “Toblerones” that we see appearing suddenly, sometimes in a completely unexpected way, in a plain between poplars or on the ridge of the alpine pass, call back – by their repetitive structure and their opposition towards natural context – real works of land art . Better: land art as ready made .
Reproducing these antitank blocks in ice [...] is a kind of mise en abyme. Glaciers and Toblerones seem to share nowadays a common fate: to disappear. If the threat of alpine glaciers’ disappearance would constitute an ecological disaster with imprevisible consequences, the Swiss army is said to be confronted with the problem of getting rid of these concrete blocks or making them disappear from its land registers. Indeed, for the army, it would be an ideal solution if all antitank blocks were in ice and not in concrete. They could therefore simply melt under the sun. This is exactly what the enemies feared, against whom dams were imagined and built and who dissolved under the sun of the 1990’s. It is also impossible here not to evocate the “real” Toblerone, the milk chocolate with almonds and honey so appreciated by tourists, but also – we have to say it – a pride of Swiss people. The sun also represents its worst enemy, because a Toblerone would loose its essence if it lost its shape...
So, the idea of carving toblerones in ice is neither a joke nor a stupid game. But even so, I am sure that Olivier Mosset would adhere to one of Marcel Duchamp’s aphorism: “stupid like a painter.” [A] Toblerone in ice [...] constitute[s] another fight against banal art, and beyond kitsch appropriate to ice sculpture competition, another “resistance piece” of Olivier Mosset. (Giovanni Carmine, Resistance Piece, Zurich, June 2003)
*an antitank block built in Switzerland during the mobilisation of Second World War, and recalled later “Toblerone“ because it looks like the triangular shape chocolate of the same name.