Ashley Bickerton, Artist ‘Blissed Out on Terrible Wonder’, Dies Aged 63
Bickerton was celebrated for his use of humour and irony in paintings, sculptures, and assemblages that have an outré sensibility all his own.
Courtesy of Gajah Gallery. Photo: Arron Teo.
Artist Ashely Bickerton died in Bali, Indonesia, on 30 November. Last year he was diagnosed with ALS, a neurodegenerative disease without a cure.
'I don't want any pity,' Bickerton told Los Angeles Magazine in August 2021. 'I'm not really in the mood for that shit,' he said. 'Life is to be lived and got on with, and I'm busy—too busy—for that.'
Born in Barbados in 1959, Bickerton lived in several countries growing up, following his father's career researching creole and pidgin languages. He went on to graduate from the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 and develop his career as an artist in New York before relocating to Bali in 1993.
During his time in New York, he joined artists such as Jeff Koons, Peter Halley, and Meyer Vaisman in the Neo-Geo movement, which critiqued the global rise of commercialism and industrialisation.
His works include: logo montages featuring his own brand, 'Susie'; sculptures presenting as products, such as the lifeboat-wardrobe work Seascape: Floating Costume to Drift for Eternity II (Cowboy Suit) (1992)'; and the painting Apex Species, Apex Moment. Before The Fall. Mother. (2018), a hyperreal portrait of an unreal subject overloaded in fruit, flowers, and paint.
In 2006, New York Times art critic Holland Cotter described Bickerton as unlike most American artists, who are 'natural-born moralists'.
'His work doesn't just wag a finger or propose reform,' Cotter wrote. 'It offers a worldview that is basically an end-of-the-world view, beyond solution, beyond revulsion, blissed-out on the terrible wonder of it all.'
'We have lost a remarkable artist and a beloved friend who will be dearly missed,' said Gajah Gallery, who worked with Bickerton since 2013, in a statement.
Other galleries who show Bickerton's work include Various Small Fires, STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, and Cardi Gallery.
Gagosian, who only added Bickerton to their roster this year, said, 'Ashley was a force within the New York art world beginning in the 1980s. Throughout this lifetime, he inspired younger artists as well as his peers with his unique blend of humour and irony across mediums including painting, sculpture, and photography.' —[O]
