About
Ashley Bickerton (1959–2022) rose to prominence in the mid-1980s with a succession of ironic, abstracted constructions focused on questions of consumerism and identity. Establishing his own (pointedly “feminine”) brand, Susie, Bickerton manufactured knowingly impersonal “self-portraits,” juxtaposing his imaginary company’s logo with various real-world examples. The works’ corporate aura is further enhanced by their elaborate steel, leather, and rubber façades. He has also produced “still lives” incorporating digital screens that display their own fluctuating market value, satirizing art as the object of commercial speculation. And since relocating to the Indonesian island of Bali in the early 1990s, Bickerton has explored cultural dislocation in paintings and sculptures with an ornate, handcrafted aesthetic.
Bickerton was born on May 26, 1959, in Barbados. He received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 and completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1985. The following year he was included, with Peter Halley, Jeff Koons, and Meyer Vaisman, in an exhibition at Sonnabend Gallery, New York, that helped cement his association with the city’s emergent Neo-Geo movement (though he felt a closer affinity with the contemporaneous Commodity Art and Neo-Conceptualist tendencies). Many of his works of the period—including such series as Abstract Painting for People (1986), Wall Wall (1986–88), and Landscape (1988)—have structures that suggest packing crates or carrying cases, alluding to prosaic function but lacking a clear purpose beyond self-promotion and self-protection.
In 1993, Bickerton’s work took a self-consciously “exotic” turn when he relocated to Bali. Its elaborate styling and tongue-in-cheek feel contrast sharply with the conceptual detachment of his previous output, though a slippage between mediums, genres, and subjects remains in evidence. Employing polished figuration to parody Western fantasies of a hypersexualized expat life, Bickerton depicts himself, his family, and his friends in lurid colors, introducing the grotesque “blue man” character as an archetypal European male in an “othered” tropical setting; he is, in the artist’s words, “lost and adrift in an alien twenty-first century, awash in a whole other set of sociocultural and psychological metrics—ones that he is clearly unable to grasp.”
Photo: courtesy Bickerton Studio
#AshleyBickerton
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2023
The Spring 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Roe Ethridge’s Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on its cover.
Game Changer
Ashley Bickerton
Michael Slenske pays tribute to the life and work of artist Ashley Bickerton.
Bickerton’s “Bickertons” in the Realm of the Fetish
Abigail Solomon-Godeau analyzes periodization, artistic persona, and fetishism in the expansive work of Ashley Bickerton.
Truth Revealed: Damien Hirst and James Fox on Ashley Bickerton
In conversation with James Fox, Damien Hirst reflects on the artwork of his longtime friend.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
ART SG
January 12–15, 2023, booth BF05
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore
artsg.com
Gagosian is pleased to announce the gallery’s participation in the inaugural edition of ART SG, with a selection of works by international contemporary artists including Banksy, Georg Baselitz, Ashley Bickerton, Edmund de Waal, Helen Frankenthaler, Katharina Grosse, Mark Grotjahn, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Thomas Houseago, Tetsuya Ishida, Alex Israel, Jia Aili, Harmony Korine, Takashi Murakami, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Ed Ruscha, Spencer Sweeney, Sarah Sze, Tatiana Trouvé, Anna Weyant, Jonas Wood, and Zeng Fanzhi.
Gagosian’s booth at ART SG 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Ashley Bickerton; © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2022; © Banksy; © Zeng Fanzhi; © 2020 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Art Fair
Art Basel Miami Beach 2022
December 1–3, 2022, booth D5
Miami Beach Convention Center
artbasel.com
Gagosian is pleased to present a selection of modern and contemporary works at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Returning to Miami for the fair’s twentieth anniversary, the gallery is honored to have participated each year the fair has been held.
Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Gerhard Richter; © Amoako Boafo; © Richard Prince; © 2022 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation; © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Artist Spotlight
Ashley Bickerton
October 26–November 1, 2022
Ashley Bickerton rose to prominence in the mid-1980s with a succession of ironic, abstracted constructions focused on questions of consumerism and identity. Since relocating to the Indonesian island of Bali in the early 1990s, he has explored cultural dislocation in paintings and sculptures with an ornate, handcrafted aesthetic, the works’ elaborate styling and tongue-in-cheek feel contrasting sharply with the conceptual detachment of his previous output. In more recent years, Bickerton has brought his practice full circle, addressing the exploitation and enduring power of nature in the face of technology.
Photo: courtesy Bickerton Studio
Museum Exhibitions
Closed
The Greek Gift
June 22–October 31, 2021
DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece
deste.gr
Coordinated by Massimiliano Gioni, this exhibition brings together a series of new and existing works alongside found objects and impromptu responses from a variety of artists who have maintained decades-long relationships with Dakis Joannou and the DESTE Foundation. Part divertissement and part collaborative project, the exhibition borrows its title from a chess tactic—the “Greek gift sacrifice.” Installed in the small, cavernous spaces of the Slaughterhouse, the works sit side by side like toys in a dollhouse. Work by Ashley Bickerton, Urs Fischer, and Christopher Wool is included.
Ashley Bickerton, Ocean Chunk: Indian Ocean/Aegean Sea, 2021, installation view, DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece © Ashley Bickerton. Photo: Paris Tavitian
Closed
Ashley Bickerton in
Emerald City
March 28–May 31, 2018
chi art space and K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong
www.k11artfoundation.org
Beginning with basic geometric concepts that represent spatial relations, Emerald City examines the structures and meanings of the cosmos, land, and sea, architectural environments, the human body, and other physical and abstract spaces to shed light on the stories of cultural coexistence amid globalization. Bringing together works of contemporary art including paintings, videos, sculptures, and site-specific installations, the exhibition demonstrates how geometry shapes our conception of the world, while also inspiring us to look at the world outside the confines of geometric thinking. Work by Ashley Bickerton is included.
Installation view, Emerald City, K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong, March 28–April 22, 2018. Artwork, front: © Carl F. Cheng; back left and back right: © Ashley Bickerton; back middle: © Nik Kosmas. Photo: courtesy K11 Art Foundation
Closed
Brand New
Art and Commodity in the 1980s
February 14–May 13, 2018
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
hirshhorn.si.edu
Brand New focuses on the 1980s as the iconic decade when artwork became a commodity and the artist, a brand. This exhibition of nearly 150 works examines the origins and rise of a new generation of artists in New York who blurred the lines between art, entertainment, and commerce—a shift that continues to define contemporary art today. Work by Ashley Bickerton, Richard Prince, and Andy Warhol is included.
Ashley Bickerton, Tormented Self-Portrait (Susie at Arles) #2, 1988 © Ashley Bickerton
Closed
Ashley Bickerton
September 23–December 16, 2017
FLAG Art Foundation, New York
www.flagartfoundation.org
Ashley Bickerton’s vibrant and often dystopic vision of contemporary culture has been at the center of his four-decade-long practice, which includes painting, photography, sculpture, and every possible combination therein. This survey, the artist’s first in the United States, demonstrates the visual range of Bickerton’s oeuvre, which oscillates between playfulness and brutality, extreme beauty and the grotesque. Works from the artist’s signature series from the 1980s to the present, including Susie, Logos, Blue Man, Water Vector, and Wall-Wall, highlight his subversive and self-aware critique of identity, consumerism, and cultural artifice.
Installation view, Ashley Bickerton, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, September 23–December 16, 2017. Artwork © Ashley Bickerton. Photo: Steven Probert