Bounty

Berlin, Germany

April 29 – June 2, 2016

Peres Projects exhibited “Bounty” on the occasion of the Gallery Weekend Berlin 2016. Mike Bouchet presents a new series of oil paintings alongside an installation of large-scale glass sculptures.

With Bounty (a word which connotes a generous surplus of amounts), Bouchet investigates our society’s collective materialism and consumer habits within the aesthetic confines and supposed safe boundaries of painting. This new body of works on canvas is based on original photographs of collapsing human trash and waste taken by the artist at the municipal water treatment plant Werdhoelzli in Zurich. As vibrantly painted visual tableaux, Bouchet captures solid waste in the fragile instant before it is processed to become homogenous sludge.

What People Do For Money

Manifesta 11

Zürich, Switzerland

June 11 – September 18, 2016 

At Manifesta 11 (2016) Mike Bouchet presented an 80 ton sculpture made of human sludge in the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art. The concept for Manifesta 11, “What People Do For Money”, hosted by the city of Zürich, was based on pairing an artist with a particular profession. Mike Bouchet had chosen to work with the city’s waste water treatment facility.