Mike Bouchet

The works of American artist Mike Bouchet (b. 1970) often involve a social action of some sort. He comments on celebrity culture, commercial systems or iconic art in works that suggest a certain social involvement.

In 2004 Bouchet began the project My Cola Lite. This is how he described it: 'I want to produce my own diet cola. I will make my own diet cola formula, and then I would like to produce and bottle enough cola to fill a sea shipping container. I would like to bottle the cola in large bottles. They will be printed with labeling that I will design. The sea container will also be painted like the cola logo. I will leave the sea container in the exhibition space for half the time of the show, and then ship the sea container to a destination in China. Once My Cola Lite reaches China, it will be available for people there to drink for free.' (Mike Bouchet: Selected Works 1989-2009, Sternberg Press 2009, p. 65)

Bouchet managed to carry out the project and to produce the cola in Belgium. Neither sugar nor sweeteners were added, but he did use a maximal amount of caramel colouring to achieve an intense, dark colour, one suggesting crude oil. A shipping container was then packed with the bottled cola and sent to China. There, ironically enough, Bouchet was hassled by the authorities for wanting to give the cola away for free. The munificent art project can thus function as a commentary on intricate aspects of the commercial circuit.  

The cola’s visual presentation was important. Bouchet designed the logo and created several paintings using the liquid as a painting medium. Thai Sucky Fucky (2005) is one such instance. Bouchet used stencils and doused parts of the canvas with the dark drink to create a picture of two glass bottles pointing in different directions. The original motif was found on a Thai webpage and appears to be a traditional advertisement for Coca Cola. Painting with liquids might remind us of the pictures Andy Warhol created with urine, but an even more immediate association is Warhol’s legendary cola paintings from the early 1960s. Warhol was the first artist to capture the aesthetics of mass production in paintings and screen prints. Yet Bouchet’s project goes further than Warhol in examining the phenomenological nature of a product that is but one link in a commercial chain. In using this conceptual strategy Bouchet solidly situates himself in his own era and creates art which functions as a commentary on economic globalization. This conceptual approach to painting is something Bouchet shares with many of his contemporaries, among others, Dan Colen, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Matias Faldbakken and Nate Lowman.

HBU