With Bounty (a word which connotes a generous surplus of amounts), Bouchet investigates our society’s collective habits within the aesthetic confines and safe boundaries of painting. This body of works on canvas is based on original photographs of collapsing human trash and waste taken by a commercial food photographer at the municipal water treatment plant in Zurich. As vibrantly painted visual tableaux, Bouchet captures the literals worst material of a society in the fragile instant before it is processed.
Despite being images of our own waste and dark symbols of a modern society, they leave the viewer feeling no sense of repulsion. The turbulence, chaos and colors recall fantastic scenes from 17th and 18th century Baroque painting, while the organic forms convey the luminosity and textures of a Dutch Golden Age still life.