This week on Arizona illustrated, Olivier, everything is painted, the walls are painted, the cars are painted.

If you decide that it's art, talk now you need to have somebody else to believe it's art and then it really becomes art.

Angels creep.

Water is life, and this is the circulatory system of the borderlands.

And cutting away, I went on my first job, I was instantly addicted.

It was actually the first time that felt alive again.

and we're here at the Tucson Museum of Art in downtown Tucson and here until February 27th is an exhibition by Olivier Mosset and his minimalist pieces fill the museum, including that work behind me there the triangular painting called Picnic.

It's an acrylic on canvas.

I have to say the Swiss born artist tells us, anyone can do this.

So what makes it art?

Why is it hanging on a museum wall?

Those are questions that he's been asking audiences since the Sixties, when his work was considered both a revolution and an outrage.

The reality is, I don't like to talk about my art somehow.

But if people ask questions.

Sure, I'll try to answer and sometimes it gives you ideas You even answer things you haven't even thought about.

So there's basically three steps you do your painting.

It's a selfish thing, you want to see something so you just do it for yourself in a way.

and then the painting has to be shown somewhere in the gallery, something to become really a painting, because then you can see what it is.

Because in the studio, it's a bit confusing.

You don't even know what you're doing really.

And the third step is when you have an exhibition, it's an exhibition in a museum and it's a different concept.

You know that other people are going to see it.

So then then you try to make something that helds as an exhibition.

I was kind of interested in, I don't know, literature or poetry in the beginning when I was a student and I saw a show in Switzerland, in Bern.

with Rauschenberg, Johns, Leslie and Stankiewicz.

and Rauschenberg, I said, Wow, this is art!

For me was amazing.

If you can do these things and that's art it means you can do anything.

There are so many moving parts to this exhibition.

one of the things that Olivier Mosset is known for is his large scale murals.

These professionals are here to do it, according to his plans.

We're not just painting or running chalk lines and doing elevations and stuff like that.

Once we get it going, it's not going to take very long.

It's pretty simple.

And I hope they really like it.

I really do, ha ha.

What's unique about this exhibition that I have ever witness is this is the first time when it installed this week that even he had seen the works installed and finished.

They couldn't be shown or even photographed or realized until they came into this huge space.

I used to be the general manager for an art store here locally, and he used to be our client, so he would come in and buy rolls of canvases twelve feet long.

They hired me to to stretch a 21 foot painting for Olivier.

We had to build a frame from scratch.

We put it into three pieces in order for it to be transported.

And we put it together here, and then we started stretching the painting.

It is a little unusual to do a solid color.

I mean, it's not just a solid color it had texture had some vibrancy on it.

I really started to do monochrome painting when I was in New York, and I think it was much easier to do that in New York and than in France or in Paris because Paris, Yves Klein was had a presence that that was monochrome.

OK, so it has been done.

In New York, It was a little more subtle because monochrome was more like painting.

We talked about it, and he said I'd like to have the yellow wall that's in the National Gallery of Canada and you would say, Well, why would you need permission?

Just paint a yellow wall and call it a Mosset.

It had to be that piece because that's the idea.

The concept behind it is the question of authorship and the question of what is an artist, what really constitutes being an artist.

Everything is painted, the walls are painted, the cars are painted.

If you decide that it's art, well, it's art.

Now you need to have somebody else to believe it's art, and then it really becomes art because it has been shown in a museum.

And then it was sold to the National Gallery of Canada that it becomes really an art piece.

And that's what makes it art.

But it's just a year old.

So he got what he wanted.

This is an official piece, owned the National Gallery of Canada.

Of course, it's not going to be rolled up or scraped off and sent back.

But we have permission to use it for the duration of this exhibition.

If I could just quickly have everybody's attention because I know we want to get inside the galleries to see, of course, Olivier's exhibition.

So tonight we celebrate, of course, the opening of Olivier Mosset.

in this exhibition.

Viewers will experience an extensive presentation of Mosset's iconic monochrome canvases, minimalist site specific works and objects rooted in Dadaist impulses.

Well, I don't want to say anything, but of course I have to thank the people who made that possible, Jeremy, Julie and all the people who installed work.

I'm kind of excited to see what it is, and we'll talk about it later.

Thank you, Olivier.

What you see is, is what you see.

And it's difficult to define that language has limitation on this.

There's a kind of visual way to communicate certain things, and that's what I'm interested in.

There's a lot to be said about just allowing yourself to see and to respond on a very primal level.

And that's what minimalism can do.

It's also a way to respect the viewer.

He has to see what what's presented.

But I'm not going to tell you what it is or what he can, what kind of feeling he has to have.

I respect him enough to know that he can dismiss the whole thing.

That's his position.

I mean, I don't mind.

I thought, I need to understand this.

It's just too simple.

It can't possibly, there's something I'm not getting.

And the more I read, the more I thought, No.

There is no magic bullet or deep reading.

You can keep reading on if you like, but it's not necessary.

In this show, it was interesting because as I said, change a couple of shapes of these works, and now there's a white panel on a white wall that I kind of discovered.

And I like that because I looked at it and said, there's something interesting.

And anybody can paint a white panel.

So these things are possible.

And this is a little bit the idea when when you talk to students, you can do whatever you want to do.

I have a certain respect for the the object itself.

And even if I like cars or motorcycle, I kind of have relationship with that.

Mosset is not saying that his motorcycles are his art.

They're in the show because they inspire him.

They motivate him.

They're very much a part of how he thinks about his work.

You don't want to mess up with them.

I mean, they have their own identity.

If it's an interesting motorcycle and you park it in the street, people look at it.

And so there's something interesting about that is an aesthetic aspect in the vehicle.

Well, I met somebody, Elizabeth, who was working in a gallery in Germany and she was from Tucson and born in Tucson, raised in Tucson.

I knew them, Elizabeth Cherry and Olivier when they had just settled here and Elizabeth had a gallery on Grant Street, I went to all the openings.

It was the hip place to be.

OK , Danke Schon.

Bon Appetit.

an artist of that caliber being out here in cowboy boots, riding a motorcycle was very much a part of, you know, my romantic visions of the West.

There's a point where I had a feeling I don't need to be in the center.

And maybe the center don't exist anymore.

You could be anywhere.

Here, you can ride a motorcycle without a helmet the weather is kind of hot, but nice.

So this was all part of it.

Maybe it's because of the painting that was doing that, I moved to Tucson instead of the other way around, I don't know.

I actually thought that maybe the museum was maybe too remote for him, I mean, he was showing all over Europe and in New York, I realized soon that he really believed in participating in a community We're at the Tucson Museum of Art, and we're in the courtyard where they have set up a nice ice wall.

We have special machines that make these 40 by 20 by ten inch blocks and each block weighs 300 pounds.

I had done some ice sculpture before the first one was done in Switzerland, up in the mountain, and we got a chunk from the glacier, which today I don't think we could do that anymore.

But I'm still grateful that people are open to do the wall in ice wall.

Some people are ready to go along and do it.

Every day, and there was like working on a Saturday.

Olivier is extremely easygoing.

He is very, very cooperative and flexible.

And it's been a lot of fun.

Artworks are also interesting because they basically done to be looked at.

So then you make the effort and you look at that.

You can enjoy looking at things, but it's also a way think about what they are.

I think it reminds us that everything is in a state of change and looking at the ice, which is, you know, when we first looked at it earlier today, it was opaque because of all of the frost on it and slowly that frost burnt away and revealed a clear block.

And as we keep looking at it now, we can see water dripping from it.

And so this is a transformation that's going on and reminds us of life, I guess.

There's no right, there's no wrong.

one of the prompts for this exhibit is to stand in front of one of Mosset's works for 60 seconds and do nothing and just see what happens.

The idea is to experience what you experience and be OK with it.

My goal is to just open that up.

What do you feel?

What do you see starting with really basic stuff, but it's amazing how quickly you can go from.

What colors do you see?

Or what does blue make you feel?

To something much more significant.

Even though it's slowly melting away, it just makes you think like to enjoy little things in life because nothing, nothing is permanent.

I think art helps you to look at things which are not the thing themselves.

And that's also what I said about my paintings.

It's a way to look at other things and who knows, after seeing the ICE piece, here you have the Scotch.

Look at you glass that, oh, you know, that's what they are.

Art still something you have to look at.

Olivier Mosset exhibition is on display at the Tucson Museum of Art through February 27th.

The Cienega Creek Natural Preserve is located just 25 miles from Tucson.

But once you walk along its perennial stream and you're surrounded by its lush riparian vegetation you're transported to a place that Tucson environmentalist and wilderness educator Angel Breault calls the circulatory system of the borderlands.

- [Angel] This is one of my favorite spots to visit in Southern Arizona, because it is relatively close to our urban core.

It's 30-minute drive from my home in Downtown Tucson.

And it is an amazing, amazing intersection of water and desert.

Water is life.

And this is the "Circulatory System of the Borderlands".

This particular vein is Cienega Creek.

It's one of our few naturally remaining riparian corridors.

It's incredibly important because this acts as a highway for biota, but also historically, ideas and materials; people, plants, animals have been moving through riparian corridors like this for thousands of years in this part of the world.

And the fact that we still have this 30 minutes from Tucson is really an amazing thing.

It's important to experience and protect places like this because they are windows into our past and our potential future.

And you're in this experience where you're reminded of the fact that your home is just nearby but also that this is your home.

This is possible.

You know, cottonwoods in the Sonoran desert is not a miracle.

It is natural.

And I think to be able to experience that and to remember that this is the innate state of being here in the borderlands, it helps you remember who you are, where you are, and why we're here.

The natural world is the foundation for everything that we value and do.

It is the framework for our economic systems for our social systems, for our traditions.

Every time you take a bite of food, you can thank a pollinator for that.

Every time you take a sip of water, you can thank the Colorado River in southern Arizona.

And we can find the natural world, not just in places like Cienega Creek or in public lands and wilderness, but in our own backyard and in our urban ecosystems as well.

This is our lifeblood.

This is literally flowing through you and through this land.

And I think that visiting places like this is really, really important and crucial to understanding who you are.

And yeah, get out here or get out to the natural world wherever you can and enjoy it.

Our next story is about something that millions of people have experienced, and perhaps billions more have feared skydiving.

What drives people to take on this extreme activity?

What can we learn from it?

To find out, we spent the day with Skydive Arizona and some of the world's top competitors who devote their lives to the sport.

And they shared their thoughts on self-empowerment cutting away from the things that hold us back.

And in a very real sense, just letting go.

(Nicholas) I went on my first jump, I was instantly addicted.

It was actually the first time that I felt alive again.

(Jeannie) When I was five years old, started making my own parachutes out of blankets, sheets and would jump off chimneys trying to slow my descent off.

(Curt) I was supposed to be a pilot.

And then I did my first AFF jump and changed the entire course of my life.

(Patrick) Extreme sports and skydiving, base jumping, speed flying, that's kind of who I am it's how I've defined myself, I did 60 jumps in my first year and 1100 my second year, so.

[music] (Woman) Now we're going to move on to the open.

Thomas de la Bach, Boris, Lisa Belinsky, Joseph Kaiser and Logan Maple, please go to Jamie.

(Nicholas) It's a weird sport.

Nine jumps.

We might spend a total two and a half minutes actually counting flying to the ground, but we'll be here for days and training for months or a year for a minute and 15 seconds of performance time.

So it's definitely there's a lot of mental stuff going on.

I purposely do like breathing techniques to help slow my heart rate so I cannot be freaked out and to be at the right mental place at that exact moment for that 15 second performance.

And when we're training and focusing on these types of events, the vertical speeds are 100 miles per hour, and that's 150 feet, a second closing and we're finishing the turn somewhere between 280 to 330 400 feet.

And so you're two to three seconds from impact if you don't stop the turn, basically.

So the perception and the speeds that we're coming in are extremely fast and it's hard to sometimes make the right decision.

And sometimes it's not a decision as much as a reaction to what's happening to save your life.

If something goes wrong or something's unexpected, you know, that's why you see us all wearing GoPros and stuff, because it's really helpful to be able to see where you started, where you finished, how it turned out, and make corrections for the next jump (Man) We'll see what happens.

[music] (Jeannie) We basically have spent the past twelve years together, and we've seen every moment of each other's careers and we push each other, even though we're competing against each other, we're still on the same team, so we're helping each other when the other person might be struggling a little bit.

(Curt) It's pretty amazing.

having a wife that doesn't just skydive, but also she actually competes as well.

So she gets the whole whole mindset and we get more nervous watching each other.

And it's not even for safety anymore.

You know, it's more about performance because we want the other one to do really well.

(Jeannie) With competing, we have to be very present, especially with the conditions changing, we have to be very aware of what's happening around us.

We're not just eyeballing stuff.

When we start our maneuvers, we're starting at the same altitude every jump and we have something again that tells us when to start.

So, of course, there's always going to be that risk, but we have a lot of tools that we use to keep it as safe as possible.

(Announcer) In the meantime, however, can I please have Mark Pierce, Ben Drew and Mike Mozell... (Patrick) I'm a combat vet, and so drinking was the way to get rid of the chip on my shoulder and I needed an outlet to get rid of the rage.

But my brain is just always cycling, always thinking about something like always on alert.

And this allows me to kind of erase that alert for, you know, 25 seconds.

you know, 25 seconds.

My older sister, when I was 19, had passed away from complications in a surgery Crohn's disease.

I was 19.

I just got out of high school, so it was really hard for me personally.

Thoughts like she's a better person than me.

Why am I still here?

Why did she go?

So that drove me to be very aggressive, I was pushing risks because of the freedom of well, who cares if something goes wrong?

I don't really care.

That was a mentality.

So I became really good, really fast.

But I was also very dangerous, very fast.

Just letting go.

Go.

And it was actually the first time that, like I said, it felt alive again.

(Curt) When you jump out of an airplane, you have to be fully present in that moment.

So everything else goes on the back burner.

For that one minute freefall plus however long you're under canopy is like, that's all that's happening.

And it's such an awesome relief for people because their bills get thrown out all the problems they're having in any aspect of their life are just they're completely gone They have to be.

(Jeannie) I coach about 800 to 1,000 students a year all over the world in different countries, and I focus a lot on the mental health part of it.

There's been quite a few people that have had a lot of drug abuse history.

Thoughts of suicide and skydiving has completely changed their lives.

If you have a fear of heights or any kind of fear, getting to that door and actually getting yourself out really releases all of that fear.

And I feel like really set you free.

(Patrick) My mom understands she understands why I do this.

She understands that it's like a replacement to doing something that is bad for me.

I think that every combat vet should make at least one skydive.

Is it going to cure PTSD?

No.

But it gives you like an outlet that allows you to be in control of your mindset even just momentarily.

And so it's like, if I can't do it, then I'm like I go stir crazy.

I literally don't know what to do with myself if my toes aren't on the line.

Like, it keeps me going for sure.

(Nicholas) You know, it's been difficult, especially relationships with family, only because you don't want to let those people down.

And I've had a lot of friends in the sport as well get into major accidents or met their demise doing what I do for a living and I have students who've wrecked and had hard times.

And so it's a huge mental game in terms of controlling your own emotion and doing things for yourself, but also trying to think about your family and about what you have or future with the people who care about you makes it much more difficult, but you find yourself in the sport, you learn things more about who you are and what you're capable of achieving and like the winning competitions and just that's helped me become much more successful in everything I've done in life.

It's got everything, but they would say, cutting away from some of the junk in life that's pulling you back and keeping you from succeeding That might be yourself if you're hard on yourself based off of what you're doing in your mental preparation for anything to go from being super depressed to finding happiness again it could be skydiving.

It could be whitewater rafting.

Whatever it is, just do something that's outside your comfort zone.

It'll make you a better person, for sure.

Like what you see on Arizona illustrated.

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Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, and we'll see you next week.