Art - Vodka can give you a big head, cautions James Hopkin
There can be few more fitting marriages than that between alcohol and the ego; the ratio between creativity and dependency is as delicate as you'd expect in any meaningful relationship.
The Absolut vodka people from Sweden have been sponsoring artists since 1985, when Andy Warhol produced his characteristically vivid painting of the distinctive bottle. Over the past two years, the company has commissioned 16 artists from across Europe to come up with their own interpretation of the famous design. With Warhol's association lending a cool credibility to the venture, those who took part included Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, the Czech photographer Jan Saudek and the fashionable French designer Olivier Gagnere.
The "Absolut Ego" exhibition in Paris brings all their vodka work together to conclude the series, while adding another dimension. Each artist was asked to represent their ego in individual rooms off the main exhibition hall. This was their only brief. Could Hirst fit an ocean in a plastic bag?
The main hall itself is certainly oceanic. Designed by the scenographer Takao HiraI, it is cool, blue and sparsely lit. Dry ice is regularly secreted, and hidden speakers intermittently play ethereal chords. This is the formless non-ego space we inhabit before confronting the idiosyncrasies on display in the artists' rooms.
As it turns out, Hirst's ego-booth is one of the least inspiring. Boasting two high piles of his original vodka advertisement - with all but the top few wrapped in brown paper - the room feels like an office. Hirst's nonchalant sense of routine is compounded by an unremarkable spin-painting in which thick slices of grey counteract the usual dizziness of colour. You don't expect Hirst to make too much of an effort, and his love-me-or-leave-me approach is integral to his aesthetic, but perhaps his arbitrariness needs to be challenged. No ego survives unopposed.
Others took the idea more seriously. Miroslaw Balka from Poland - who has a room of his mixed material sculptures in the Tate Modern - has covered the floor of his ego-space with several inches of salt. As well as representing the dried sweat of the artist's endeavour, the salt slows down the viewer's progress around the room, thereby encouraging a more studied perception of the work itself, and an unhurried confrontation with the artist's ego.
Framed throughout are charred fragments of sketches that Balka saved from a studio fire in 1993. He sees these remnants as representing both the ego's vulnerability and its durability; "they are maps of experience, of thoughts, of risk," he says. In their similarity to ancient parchments, they also possess a religious aspect, and the sanctity of Balka's room is emphasised by a video showing him sieving a palm full of ashes from one hand to the other. Coming from a fanatical Roman Catholic country, this aspect of his work is not surprising. "My heroes were not pop groups," he says, "they were saints."
Katerina Kana, a young Greek-Cypriot artist, also reveals a fascination with the slowing down of time. A long glass case almost fills her black-walled room. Inside the case, in perspex letters, the artist has spelled out her name: K-A-N-A. And within the letters, there are a thousand living snails. Most of them have been painted a luminous pink, and a few in black. It is quite entrancing, as the viewer looks hard for the slightest sign of movement.
"I like snails," Kana explains, "because they are very old, and they are hermaphrodites. I like their time, their slowness, and the way they regroup."
After an hour, Kana creates a small gap in each of the letters through which the snails can proceed elsewhere. "My name concentrates my ego," she says, "and it will be dispersed. I think one day you should maybe disappear."
Indeed, a sense of what can be lost, what can be recovered, and how objects can afford the ego an identity, perhaps unites these disparate artists. Olivier Gagnere presents a big museum-like viewing case inside which there are various objets trouves: a clay skull, a vase, rose petals, a string of pearls. A vocalist sings "come as you are". "It's as if my objects are floating past me down the Seine," says Gagnere. The vodka bottle, too, presumably.
The Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is the wise-cracking jester of contemporary art. His ego-booth is empty and undecorated save for his vodka-bottle portrait (showing a drunk mouse sitting in an empty bottle) and a small, unhappy-looking figure perched on one of the lighting fixtures. Cattelan has one of the largest spaces, yet the smallest exhibit. Why? "I was just looking for something you can sell as a sandwich," he laughs. He then complains that he didn't ask for a spotlight to be trained on his work. "Sometimes a really good mistake can improve a work," he smiles, "but not in this case."
Yet, like all the artists here, Cattelan believes this intriguing, beautifully designed exhibition to be "a very good ending to the history of the Absolut campaign". Now, though, he's much more concerned with his forthcoming show at the Royal Academy. "Yes, yes," he says, giving his ego full vent, "the Pope is coming!"
"Absolut Ego" is at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Palais du Louvre, Paris, until 2 July (00 33 1 42 60 32 14)
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