Mike Bouchet

Since the early 1990s, Mike Bouchet has been producing a seemingly boundless array of conceptually rigorous works—including paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, actions, interventions, and performances—through which he critically questions political, economic, and cultural systems and the role of the artist in society. At once deadly serious and highly absurd, his works walk the line between art and life, fantasy and reality, often purposely creating confusion between these categories. In Carpe Denim (2004), for example, he highlighted the insatiable consumer demand for cheap products by having his own brand of blue jeans manufactured in Colombia. Rather than importing and selling his jeans, Bouchet loaded them into an airplane and had them dropped onto the city in which they were manufactured.